THE    VEILED    DOCTOR 


B 


BY 


VARINA  ANNE  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 


NEW     YORK 

HARPER    &    BROTHERS    PUBLISHERS 
1895 


l 


Copyright,  1895,  by  HARPER  &  BROTHERS. 


All  rights  rtstrved. 


THE    VEILED    DOCTOR 


CHAPTER  I 

WELL  out  of  the  course  of  the  present 
lines  of  travel  there  stands  a  sleepy  old  town, 
where  the  brooding  quiet  muffles  every  pulse 
of  modern  life.  No  latter-day  institutions 
profane  the  antiquity  of  its  streets  ;  no  steam- 
whistles  disturb  its  dreams  of  former  gran- 
deur. Years  ago,  when  this  had  been  a  centre 
of  the  trade  which  found  transportation  in 
the  heavy-bodied,  ungraceful  schooners  and 
barks  that  lie  rotting  now  in  the  grass-grown 
docks,  there  had  been  some  talk  of  bringing 
the  railroad  this  way.  But  the  city  fathers, 
in  blue  coats  and  brass  buttons,  took  snuff 
together  as  they  discussed  the  many  disad- 
vantages consequent  upon  such  innovation. 


They  had  refused  right  of  way,  refused  to 
contribute  to  the  stock  of  the  baby  enter- 
prise, refused  everything,  in  short,  and  so 
successfully  blocked  its  progress  that  a  dif- 
ferent route  was  decided  upon,  and  the  old 
town,  under  its  canopy  of  trees,  fell  forever 
out  of  step  with  the  vanguard  of  commerce. 
But  the  retired  sea  captains  who  formed  its 
population  congratulated  each  other  upon 
the  wisdom  of  their  choice  as  they  smoked 
in  the  tiny  amphibious  parlors  among  the 
rare  shells  and  curios  gathered  in  a  life's 
cruising.  So,  bustling  prosperity  ebbed 
away,  and,  like  the  tide  in  the  sluggish  har- 
bor, nobody  noticed  its  going  until  it  was 
beyond  recall. 

In  the  centre  of  the  old  town,  a  jewel  in  a 
fit  setting,  there  stands  the  largest  and  qui- 
etest house  of  all.  The  fan-light  above  the 
colonial  doorway  has  looked  down  upon  the 
same  ruts  in  the  streets  for  over  a  century, 
its  brass  floriated  hinges  have  reflected  gen- 
eration after  generation  of  the  same  families 
as  they  passed  to  and  fro  on  their  business 
in  life.  Here  the  wedding  processions  must 


all  turn  the  corner  to  reach  the  old  church 
on  which  the  house's  garden  abutted.  Here, 
too,  the  funerals  wound  their  way,  and  Sun- 
day after  Sunday  the  tiny  panes  of  the  win- 
dows blinked  at  the  people  going  to  meet- 
ing from  the  time  when  balloon-skirts  and 
periwigs  were  "macaroni"  through  all  the 
changes  of  fashion,  until  now,  if  they  think 
at  all,  they  must  wonder  if  powdered  hair 
be  in  favor  again,  for  all  the  heads  that 
cross  the  road  are  either  white  or  grizzled ; 
young  blood  does  not  take  over-kindly  to 
the  stagnant  town,  and  soon  drifts  into  more 
untrammelled  channels.  In  the  gambrel  roof 
of  the  old  house  a  window  blinks  from  under 
its  projecting  shingles  like  the  single  eye  of 
some  sleepy  Polyphemus,  and  behind  it 
stretches  a  long  and  pleasant  garden,  where 
pear  and  apple  trees  peep  over  the  high  box 
hedge  at  the  graveyard  beyond. 

There  was  a  day  when  the  house  was  re- 
plete with  young  life ;  when  the  high,  nar- 
row hall  was  decorated  with  flowers,  and  the 
great  rooms  that  opened  out  on  either  hand 
smelled  sweet  with  the  wealth  of  many  gar- 


dens  robbed  to  make  her  new  home  beauti- 
ful in  the  eyes  of  Gordon  Wickford's  wife. 
There  had  always  been  a  Wickford  in  the 
old  house.  Since  colonial  times,  when  the 
first  of  them  built  its  solid  walls,  the  family 
dominated  the  place  socially,  just  as  the  win- 
dows in  their  roof  looked  down  on  the  hum- 
bler homes  around  it.  To  be  Madame  Wick- 
ford  was,  as  the  quaint  title  implied,  to  be  at 
the  head  of  such  society  as  the  town  afford- 
ed ;  it  was  the  apex  of  every  well-bred  girl's 
hopes,  and  the  end  of  every  mother's  schem- 
ing. Consequently,  when  the  last  man  of  the 
great  family  returned  from  college — beauti- 
ful, rich,  and  fired  with  real  enthusiasm  for 
his  profession — there  was  no  little  cap-set- 
ting among  his  feminine  neighbors. 

People  said  he  had  not  been  quite  as  con- 
siderate of  others'  feelings  as  might  be  ex- 
pected in  so  high-principled  a  young  gentle- 
man, but  the  reputation  of  a  mild  village 
"  Juan  "  did  not  harm  him  in  the  eyes  of 
the  pretty,  foolish  maidens.  There,  for  in- 
stance, was  little  Alice  Marlow,  next  door, 
with  whom  he  used  to  sing  so  sweetly  that 


the  news  of  his  approaching  marriage  had 
obscured  all  the  light  in  her  narrow,  quiet 
existence.  She  would  probably  have  gone 
the  way  of  her  weak-chested  tribe  anyhow ; 
but  people  were  more  romantic  in  those 
days,  and  blamed  him  severely  when  she 
died,  or  rather,  to  be  more  accurate,  they 
blamed  his  new  wife,  who,  not  being  one  of 
themselves — an  interloper,  as  it  were — was 
fair  game  for  gossip. 

The  woman  he  brought  home  from  the 
city  was  certainly  not  of  a  consumptive 
type,  and  although  there  might  be  a  ques- 
tion about  her  fascination,  no  one  could 
deny  her  claim  to  such  perfect  beauty  that 
it  almost  antagonized  the  beholder.  It  cer- 
tainly went  far  towards  her  undoing  with 
the  good  folk  among  whom  she  was  to  live. 
Her  figure  was  lithe  and  round,  with  long 
limbs  that  ended  in  slender  feet  and  hands. 
There  were  red  flashes  in  the  depths  of  her 
brown  eyes,  that  looked  out  from  under 
straight  black  brows.  Her  nose  was  deli- 
cately formed,  with  just  the  slightest  incli- 
nation to  aquilinity ;  her  lips  were  thin  and 


red  —  indeed,  at  times  their  color  seemed 
almost  unnatural  against  the  rosy  tint  of  the 
skin.  It  was  the  scarlet  mouth  of  a  sensu- 
ous, beauty -loving  woman  set  in  a  child's 
face.  But  her  glory  lay  in  her  hair;  each 
thread  of  it,  replete  with  its  own  glad,  golden 
life,  rippled  from  the  very  roots  in  luxuri- 
ous undulations,  and  broke  at  last  into  a 
foam  of  little  curls  wherever  it  escaped  con- 
finement. How  she  and  her  black  maid 
brushed  it !  How  they  washed  it  and  rubbed 
in  the  pomatums  before  they  built  up  the 
towering  bows  of  the  fashionable  coiffure  of 
that  day !  It  was  the  pride  of  her  life,  and 
took  precedence  of  the  superb  young  hus- 
band she  had  achieved  for  herself  in  her 
second  season.  She  refused  to  cut  a  lock  of 
it  for  him,  but  laughingly  bade  him  wait. 
"  You  will  soon  own  hair  and  head  too,  Gor- 
don," she  said,  "and  I  would  not  injure 
your  future  property,  not  even  for  your  ask- 
ing." The  yellow  coils  had  an  odd,  incon- 
gruous effect  above  the  dark  eyebrows;  they 
gave  her  an  unfamiliar,  exotic  air,  which  she 
fully  appreciated  and  made  the  most  of. 


Wickford's  courtship  had  been  short  and 
fervent.  The  man  prostrated  himself  spirit- 
ually before  her  beauty,  and  demanded  noth- 
ing but  the  acceptance  of  his  adulation. 
However,  she  possessed  the  grace  of  re- 
ceiving it  prettily,  and  it  was  enough  for 
him.  She  was  well-born,  but  an  orphan, 
and  a  poor  one  ;  yet,  in  the  humility  of  his 
great  love,  it  seemed  a  little  thing  to  lay 
his  fortune  and  his  honest  young  heart  at 
her  feet.  As  to  her  character,  his  sublime 
faith  in  his  ideal  was  pathetically  earnest ; 
he  believed  in  her  as  a  savage  might  in  his 
fetich,  and  would  have  bitterly  resented  the 
suggestion  of  any  imperfection  in  his  idol. 
So  they  were  married,  and  arrived  in  a  pri- 
vate travelling-carriage  amid  dust,  sunshine, 
and  the  curious  observation  of  the  towns- 
people. 

As  yet  the  trees  in  the  street  had  not 
completely  hidden  their  graceful  branch- 
line-s  in  new  spring  greenery ;  there  were 
still  light  young  shoots  in  the  box  hedges, 
and  the  air  was  full  of  the  breath  of  the 
spring.  In  the  old  garden  long  lines  of 


crocus,  yellow  jonquils,  and  single  blue  hya- 
cinths hedged  the  grass-plots.  The  snow- 
balls were  covered  with  great  foamy  white 
balls,  periwinkles  looked  up  clear-eyed  from 
under  the  parlor  windows,  and  everywhere 
the  single  blue  violets  were  making  the  air 
sweet  with  their  spring  thanksgiving.  The 
tall  standard  roses  had  thrown  out  pale-green 
racemes,  and  the  "  bridal-wreath  "  bushes  were 
just  commencing  to  powder  their  branches 
with  miniature  blossoms.  A  young  moon 
hung  like  a  reap-hook  in  the  evening  sky ; 
the  bride  and  groom  could  see  it  between  a 
fretwork  of  flowery  apple  and  pear  branches 
as  they  paced  backward  and  forward  in  the 
soft  air. 

The  woman  beside  him  seemed  to  Wick- 
ford  the  heart  and  essence  of  the  spring, 
and  his  pride  and  happiness  swelled  in  him 
until  the  burden  of  his  joy  grew  almost 
painful.  There  was  only  one  regret  which 
troubled  him  —  never  any  more  could  he 
enrich  his  good-fortune  tenfold  by  pouring 
it  into  his  mother's  sympathetic  ear.  A 
kind  of  loyalty  to  her,  a  tender  desire  to 


ingraft  her  memory  even  upon  this  mo- 
ment of  supreme  bliss,  unlocked  the  door 
of  his  reserve,  and  he  began  to  talk  to  his 
young  wife  of  old  Madame  Wickford.  It 
was  she  who  had  planted  this  very  garden 
with  loving  hands.  He  spoke  of  the  gentle 
influence  that  diffused  itself  around  her  like 
the  perfume  of  her  beloved  flowers,  which  he 
had  piously  preserved,  every  plant  and  shrub 
just  as  she  had  left  them.  He  told  how 
the  garden  was  to  him  a  stage,  over  which 
flitted  the  figures  of  his  parents,  his  old  aunt, 
his  nurse,  and  his  playmates.  All  the  recol- 
lections of  his  childhood  were  played  out 
amid  its  scenery.  It  was,  indeed,  a  place 
where  memory  made  sweet  music  for  him 
among  the  trees.  Here  he  had  dreamed  of 
his  future  wife  in  his  short  bachelor  days, 
"  but  never,  love,  could  I  imagine  anything 
half  so  beautiful  as  you,"  he  told  her.  Here 
he  had  mapped  out  a  career  for  her  to  the 
minutest  detail,  for,  as  he  said,  Isabel  was 
now  to  take  up  old  Madame  Wickford's 
charities  where  his  mother's  dying  hands 
dropped  them ;  his  profession  and  ample 


10 


means  had  enabled  him  to  keep  track  of 
her  former  pensioners.  "  Though  what  was," 
he  exclaimed,  "  the  little  money  he  could 
give  to  the  elevating  influence  his  wife  would 
inspire !"  Her  beauty  he  intended  should 
carry  comfort  to  the  sick  and  suffering  ,  her 
knowledge  of  a  larger  world  help  her  to 
grasp  and  hold  the  reins  of  social  dominion. 
She  must  take  the  lead  in  church  matters — 
must  be  Lady  Bountiful.  In  a  word,  he  con- 
cluded, "  I  look  forward  to  seeing  you  de- 
velop into  just  such  a  patient,  helpful,  saint- 
ly creature  as  my  dear  mother  was.  I  hope 
to  find  you  thinking  her  thoughts,  doing  her 
deeds  of  mercy,  and  going  down  to  the 
grave  at  last  blessed  as  she  was  by  the  whole 
community." 

A  sense  of  mutinous  impatience  began  to 
burn  in  Isabel's  hot  young  heart ;  it  was  cer- 
tainly not  of  charities  and  churches  she  had 
been  dreaming  when  she  had  married  the 
catch  of  the  season.  Nor  had  he  a  right, 
she  thought,  to  arrange  her  existence  for 
her  without  so  much  as  consulting  her  per- 
sonal taste ;  it  was  treating  her  altogether 


II 

too  much  as  one  of  his  goods  and  chattels, 
and  she  determined  to  make  an  obstinate  re- 
sistance before  she  sank  into  the  colorless, 
goody-goody  life  her  mother-in-law  must 
have  led.  Besides,  this  eternal  harping  on 
the  perfections  of  another  woman  was  dis- 
tasteful. It  carried  a  concealed  sting  of 
comparison,  which  was  not  blunted  by  her 
inner  assurance  that  she  was  of  a  vitally  dif- 
ferent clay  from  the  angelic  character  her 
husband  described.  Privately,  Madame  Isa- 
bel vastly  preferred  being,  as  she  called  it,  "  a 
woman  of  spirit  "  than  assuming  this  role  of 
special  town  Providence,  which  did  not  fit 
her  in  the  least. 

Gordon  talked  on  and  on,  garrulous  in  his 
overflowing  happiness,  while  the  girl  beside 
him  listened  sullenly.  Never  a  woman 
breathed  who  enjoyed  having  another  wom- 
an's perfections  thrust  under  her  eyes  for 
contemplation,  and  the  vain,  petted  beauty 
formed  no  exception  to  the  rule.  She  was 
physically  tired,  too,  and  not  a  little  dis- 
appointed by  her  surroundings  ;  the  town 
seemed  so  small,  the  people  so  out  of  style ; 


12 

everything  jarred  on  her  nerves,  and  she  un- 
justly, but  not  unnaturally,  included  her  hus- 
band in  the  list  of  trials.  Even  Wickford's 
love-making  had  taken  on  a  didactic,  superior 
tone  that  she  flinched  under  like  a  restive 
horse.  She  knew  he  was  still  lauding  that 
inexhaustible  mother  of  his,  although  she 
did  not  listen  closely,  wrapping  herself  in  a 
cloud  of  disagreeable*  thoughts.  However, 
her  attention  waked  suddenly  as  he  opened 
the  wicket  in  the  hedge.  She  looked  up  in- 
quiringly. 

"  Come,  dear,"  he  said,  "  I  want  you  to 
know  where  she  lies,  the  sweetest,  tenderest, 
best  woman  that  ever  made  a  man  happy. 
I  wish  to  point  out  her  grave  to  you  myself, 
for,  as  I  said,  I  wish  you  to  strive  to  emulate 
her  virtues  in  all  things.  Oh,  if  she  had  only 
lived  to  lead  you  up  to  her  own  high  stand- 
ard with  those  loving,  tender  hands  skilled 
in  all  womanly  arts  !" 

She  stopped  short,  and  her  strained  cour- 
tesy snapped. 

"  Does  it  not  strike  you,  Gordon,"  she 
asked,  in  a  sarcastic  tone,  "  that  I  have  been 


13 

phenomenally  patient  under  your  sermon- 
izing? You  could  hardly  imagine  that  you 
have  made  yourself  particularly  gay  and 
amusing  on  my  first  evening  at  home,  which 
you  have  spent  lauding  another  woman's 
perfections  to  my  disadvantage." 

"  Why,  Isabel !"  he  exclaimed,  bewildered. 
"  I  don't  understand.  I  was  talking  of  my 
dear  mother." 

"  Oh,  la,  of  course  you  were !"  she  inter- 
rupted, hastily.  "  I  have  had  your  mother 
for  three  solid  hours  by  the  clock,  and  though 
I  haven't  a  doubt  she  was  a  most  excellent 
old  body,  enough  is  as  good  as  a  feast.  As 
for  expecting  me  to  live  the  life  of  an  almo- 
ner of  your  bounty,  you  might  as  well  give 
it  up,  for  I  am  what  I  am,  and  it  is  as  use- 
less to  make  me  over  as  a  last  year's  bonnet." 

Gordon  stared  in  shocked  astonishment. 
"  You  can't  mean,"  he  said  at  last,  incredu- 
lously, "  that  you  will  not — " 

"  But  I  most  assuredly  do  mean  it,"  she 
broke  in.  "  I  am  not  going  to  spend  my 
time  among  ill -smelling  poor  people  and 
quarrelsome  old  maids,  if  that's  what  you 


14 

want  of  me.  It's  disagreeable  to  be  cross, 
Gordon,  but  you  have  bored  me  beyond  en- 
durance with  your  retrospects.  The  dew  is 
falling;  I  am  going  in."  So  saying,  she 
turned  on  her  heel  and  soon  disappeared  in 
the  house  beyond. 

Her  contemptuous  withdrawal  from  his 
confidences  stung  him  deeply.  He  had  been 
showing  her  his  Holy  of  Holies,  and  she 
found  him  "  boring."  There  is  always  some- 
thing absurd  about  rejected  tenderness,  too, 
and  his  exaggerated  idea  of  his  own  im- 
portance, fed  on  the  universal  adulation  of 
his  fellow -townsmen,  made  him  peculiarly 
sensitive  to  ridicule.  He  was  a  good  man, 
but  by  no  means  devoid  of  a  provincial's 
touchy  vanity.  It  also  greatly  aggravated 
the  situation  that  his  mother's  memory  was 
mixed  up  with  their  first  misunderstanding. 
He  felt  very  bitter  at  the  moment,  but  wisely 
determined  to  go  out  alone,  and  reconquer 
some  measure  of  mental  quiet  before  he  saw 
Isabel  again.  Seated  in  the  rank  grass  by 
the  side  of  old  Madame  Wickford's  monu- 
ment, he  slowly  reasoned  himself  back  into 


15 

good  temper,  although  the  jar  of  his  fall 
from  Paradise  had  set  all  his  nerves  jangling. 
Doctor-like,  he  made  allowance  for  Isabel's 
fatigue  and  the  thousand  physical  trials  that 
the  old  stage-coach  travel  necessarily  in- 
volved. Her  lonely  position  called  out  all 
his  manliness,  and  as  the  stars  came  out 
one  by  one,  and  the  spring  night  distilled  a 
stronger  essence  from  the  flowers  in  the  gar- 
den, peace  returned  to  him,  but  the  untrou- 
bled glory  of  his  young  love's  morning  was 
gone  forever. 


CHAPTER   II 

THE  wedding  of  the  town's  greatest  catch 
was,  of  course,  the  event  of  the  year,  and  no 
little  interest  centred  around  this  new  mem- 
ber of  society,  who  had  become  by  matri- 
monial right  the  leading  lady  of  the  neigh- 
borhood. Visitors  poured  in  upon  her, 
women  arrayed  in  the  past  fashion,  who 
were  too  much  taken  up  with  her  city 
finery  and  too  completely  awed  by  her  ur- 
bane manners  to  show  themselves  at  their 
simple  best.  She  drank  tea  with  them  out  of 
handleless  blue-and-white  teacups — true  tea 
dishes,  whose  size  is  a  constant  astonishment 
to  modern  ideas.  She  honestly  tried  to  be 
civil,  but  hers  was  an  observation  without 
sympathy,  and  it  froze  any  expansiveness 
in  her  visitors  at  its  very  source.  The  men 
were  in  worse  case  than  their  sisters  ;  she 
set  cake  and  wine  before  them  with  perfect 


17 

if  somewhat  supercilious  politeness.  But 
these  unpolished  specimens,  whose  finger- 
nails even  were  not  always  irreproachable, 
became  suddenly  conscious  as  she  scrutinized 
them  of  an  unnatural  length  of  limb  and 
the  appalling  impossibility  of  tucking  their 
large  hands  and  feet  out  of  her  sight.  She 
watched  them  all  coldly,  recording  their  pe- 
culiarities with  photographic  exactitude,  to 
be  repeated  with  such  exaggeration  of  word 
and  gesture  as  served  these  good  bovine  peo- 
ple up  so  seasoned  by  her  humor  that  they 
were  endowed  with  a  new  spice  of  comedy, 
which  could  have  surprised  nobody  more 
than  themselves.  Her  husband,  naturally, 
was  treated  to  many  such  a  dish  of  gossip. 

Although  he  tried  to  remember  that  his 
own  point  of  view  was  too  nearly  theirs  to 
enable  him  to  judge  his  old  friends  and 
neighbors,  he  could  not  help  a  dawning 
astonishment  at  Isabel's  singular  blindness 
to  their  higher  moral  traits.  She  could  and 
did  make  him  laugh  with  her  at  times,  but 
he  felt  an  ever-present  and  growing  uneasi- 
ness at  the  strange  unlikeness  he  discovered 


i8 


between  his  dream-wife  and  his  real  house 
mistress. 

There,  for  instance,  was  Aunt  Hannah, 
whose  high  genealogical  pretension  she  had 
piously  refrained  from  scrutinizing.  Ma- 
dame once  repeated  a  long  dissertation  on 
his  pedigree,  of  which  she  had  been  the  bored 
auditor,  and  ended  it  with  the  peroration  : 

"  Why,  now,  I  never  suspected  I  was 
marrying  into  such  aristocracy.  Your  aunt 
told  me  your  family  was  the  oldest  in 
America,  for  they  came  over  with  William 
the  Conqueror,  and  you  know  that  is,  indeed, 
a  unique  pretension.  Yes,  I've  made  a  great 
match  and  no  mistake."  And  she  courte- 
sied  to  her  image  in  the  convex  mirror  over 
the  fireplace  with  a  ludicrous  imitation  of 
the  old  lady's  stiff-jointed  movements. 

He  loved  his  aunt,  but  he  laughed  all  the 
same,  and  caught  and  kissed  Isabel  before 
she  ran  away  on  one  of  her  many  errands 
that  accomplished  nothing. 

There  was  bitterness  in  it  all  though,  for, 
like  most  denizens  of  small  towns,  he  had 
a  proprietary  feeling  towards  his  surround- 


19 

ings,  and  suffered  under  a  morbid  aversion 
to  ridicule ;  even  a  harmless  joke  rankled, 
and  real  lese  majestt  affecting  his  dignity 
was  more  just  cause  for  quarrel  in  his 
mind  than  a  serious  injury.  Had  she  not 
been  part  of  his  very  self,  her  ridicule  of 
his  family  and  friends  would  have  irritated 
him  sooner;  but,  with  a  fatuous  forbear- 
ance, he  let  her  skewer  individual  after 
individual  with  her  sarcasm  until  she 
marched  upon  him  in  open  order.  She 
derided  his  dress,  saying  it  lacked  a  certain 
smartness  she  was  accustomed  to  in  her 
city  beaux,  and  called  his  rather  pompous 
if  sincere  love-making,  "  born,  sir,  in  a  land 
of  liberty,"  speeches,  and  begged  him  to 
save  his  polysyllables  for  his  patients,  as 
they  might  pay  him  and  she  could  not. 

She  grew  impatient,  too,  as  the  novelty  of 
her  new  situation  wore  off,  and  seemed  to  hold 
him  personally  responsible  for  the  ennui  of 
her  life.  Nothing  ever  happened  in  the  old 
town ;  although  people  married  and  died 
even  in  such  back-waters  of  existence,  they 
took  such  a  long  time  about  it  here  that 


20 


the  neighbors  were  denied  the  sensation  of  an 
unexpected  event  of  even  this  mild  character. 

As  Wickford  became  more  and  more  ab- 
sorbed in  his  profession  she  naturally  saw 
less  of  him,  and,  failing  diversions  to  her 
taste,  she  joined  the  local  sewing  societies, 
went  to  tea-parties,  the  respectable  dulness 
of  which  was  proverbial  even  in  that  day, 
and  generally  took  her  place  in  the  society 
it  was  her  lot  to  fill.  However,  it  was  a  use- 
less task  for  her  to  try  to  become  part  of  the 
town's  life ;  she  was  as  foreign  to  her  sur- 
roundings as  a  paradise-bird  in  a  company  of 
thrushes.  Her  accomplishments  were  those 
of  a  city  dame,  and  these  good  housewives 
valued  the  things  they  knew  themselves 
more  than  the  unfamiliar  learning  she  pos- 
sessed. She  was  accused  of  that  fatal  mis- 
take, "putting  on  airs;"  and  as  one  mother 
in  Israel  summed  it  up,  "  I  do  suppose  her 
guardians  may  be  proud  of  her  upbringing, 
but  I  cannot  judge,  as  she  may  know  what 
I  do  not;  I  have  never  found  her  know  any- 
thing with  which  I  was  acquainted." 

Vain   and  unadmired,  the  lady  naturally 


21 

turned  to  her  husband  for  the  adulation 
which  was  the  breath  of  her  nostrils.  But 
he  had  been  so  effectually  laughed  out  of 
his  old-fashioned,  high-flown  expressions  of 
tenderness  that  he  had  withdrawn  his  adora- 
tion into  a  shell  of  silence  where  it  was  safe 
from  pin -pricks.  He  was,  though,  one  of 
the  many  people  to  whom  the  expression  of 
affection  is  a  necessity  for  its  continued  ex- 
istence, and  in  the  silence  he  forced  upon 
himself  his  love  was  gradually  but  surely 
dying  for  lack  of  light  and  air. 

If  his  sense  of  humor  was  latent,  his  ap- 
preciation of  the  ridiculous  was  abnormally 
sharp  where  it  touched  any  of  his  own  be- 
longings, therefore  it  was  a  futile  attempt  to 
elicit  the  desired  flattery  from  him  with  bait 
of  retailed  compliments,  which,  she  said,  had 
been  showered  upon  her  everywhere.  There 
were  compliments  to  her  eyes,  her  figure, 
her  grace,  and  her  hair  —  always  her  hair, 
which  she  likened  to  a  crown  of  glory,  the 
heart  of  a  rose,  spun  gold — anything,  in  short, 
that  was  lovely.  Indeed,  she  gave  her  van- 
ity free  rein,  with  her  imagination  for  a 


22 

driver,  and  so  embellished  the  little  expres- 
sions of  recognition  which  her  beauty  really 
elicited  that  there  was  no  courtier  in  all 
France  who  could  have  made  prettier  speech- 
es than  she  invented  for  herself  and  repeated 
for  her  husband's  delectation.  She  distrib- 
uted the  credit  of  them  among  the  various 
towns-people,  which  astonished  him  at  first, 
for  he  knew  his  neighbors  better  than  she 
knew  her  own  heart.  After  a  while  an 
uneasy  doubt  that  she  was  lying  dawned 
upon  him,  a  doubt  that  she  was  doing  the 
one  thing  which  no  barrier  of  use  nor  oath 
of  allegiance  could  bring  him  to  pardon. 
Ignorance  he  could  forgive,  vanity  he  might 
condone,  but  in  his  calendar  of  sins  lying 
stood  out  supreme,  a  red-letter  offence  that 
burned  into  the  very  heart  of  affection  and 
killed  it  root  and  branch. 

He  tried  not  to  reason  over  her  flights  of 
fancy,  but  in  a  man  of  active  mind  self-stulti- 
fication is  no  easy  task,  and  under  the  stress 
of  it  he  grew  morose,  and  returned  her  pretty 
frequent  outbreaks  of  temper  with  a  stolid 
silence  that  maddened  without  curbing  her. 


23 

Every  now  and  then  he  would  make 
some  spasmodic  attempt  to  get  out  of  the 
divergent  ruts  that  were  leading  their  spirits 
to  such  different  goals.  In  this  vain  search 
after  some  common  interest  he  tried  to  talk 
of  his  profession,  but  was  met  by  a  half- 
laughing  protest  against  the  introduction  of 
"  shop  "  into  his  home  conversation.  He 
made  her  dreams  nightmares,  she  said,  which 
was  "  bad  practice,"  she  knew.  He  had  no 
better  luck  in  his  efforts  to  awaken  her  in- 
terest in  the  charities  about  her.  Her 
sensuous  spirit  revolted  at  the  pitiful  sights 
and  sounds  she  encountered,  and  sympathy 
fell  dead  when  confronted  by  ugliness  and 
squalor.  She  frankly  said  she  "  would  not  be 
willing  to  buy  heaven  at  the  price  of  evil 
odors,"  and  when  he  expostulated  she  told 
him  tartly  that  she  would  be  charitable  her 
own  way  or  not  at  all.  There  was  a  revolt 
within  her  against  the  sense  of  being  driven 
into  goodness  that  made  virtue  itself  posi- 
tively distasteful. 

She  remembered  sometimes  how  she  had 
kicked  and  screamed  as  a  child  when  they 


24 

tried  to  insist  on  her  doing  what  she  dis- 
liked ;  there  were  times  now  when  she  could 
have  resorted  to  her  old  tactics  with  genu- 
ine pleasure ;  her  husband's  ideals  irritated 
her  no  less  because  she  was  unwilling  to 
fulfil  them.  However,  she  was  not  averse 
to  posing  as  Lady  Bountiful  before  the 
world  as  well  as  in  her  private  sanctuary, 
where  she  sang  paeans  to  her  own  gener- 
ous subscriptions  to  well-known  objects  for 
which  Wickford  paid.  It  was  not  that  she 
experienced  any  unwillingness  to  stop  the 
mouth  of  poverty  with  a  bounty  that  cost 
her  nothing,  nor  yet  was  she  harassed  by 
transcendental  scruples  in  regard  to  pau- 
perizing the  population.  She  simply  was 
not  amused,  nor  in  her  day  were  there  many 
who,  like  the  Doctor,  already  realized  the 
right  of  the  poor  to  the  overflow  of  the 
rich.  Therefore  her  descents  into  the  shady 
places  of  life  were  by  no  means  frequent,  and 
when  she  did  go,  her  excursions  usually  took 
the  form  of  visits  to  the  poor-house  and  the 
board-schools,  where  she  could  dispense  her 
favors  without  unnecessary  contact  with  dis- 


25 

gusting  details,  and  at  the  same  time  garner 
a  sheaf  of  admiration  and  applause  at  slight 
personal  expense. 

One  of  her  good  qualities  was  a  genuine 
regard  for  children,  as  long  as  they  were  not 
troublesome.  In  common  with  most  pretty 
people,  she  possessed  no  small  attraction  for 
them.  This  genius  for  making  herself  amus- 
ing to  the  little  folk  won  her  the  only  cordial 
friend  she  made  in  the  old  town — a  little 
six-year-old  boy  living  next  door,  who  tod- 
dled back  and  forth  on  his  chubby  legs  until 
he  grew  really  puzzled  as  to  which  house  he 
belonged.  His  unsettled  state  of  mind  was 
resolved  by  the  random  question  of  a  passing 
stranger. 

"Where  I  lives?"  replied  Johnnie,  after 
much  thumb-sucking.  "  I  'spect  I  must 
live  in  here,  'cause,  when  I  cries,  Mis'  Wick- 
ford  she  sends  me  to  mother  till  I'se  good." 


CHAPTER   III 

WITH  the  progress  of  the  spring  Madame 
began  to  fill  the  house  with  relays  of  her 
fashionable  friends.  The  Doctor,  who  was 
destitute  of  musical  taste  and  cursed  with 
a  countryman's  sensitiveness  to  noise,  was 
disagreeably  conscious  of  the  piano,  rattled 
all  day  long  by  the  pretty  young  women  his 
wife  drew  around  her. 

The  officers  in  the  barracks  outside  the 
old  town  flocked  in,  quick  to  perceive  that  a 
new  centre  of  attraction  had  sprung  up  amid 
the  wastes  of  bourgeoise  respectability.  To 
help  out  the  military  contingent  there  were 
every  now  and  then  parties  of  young  exqui- 
sites down  from  the  city  off  on  a  frolic  and 
determined  to  make  the  most  of  it.  Ma- 
dame had  a  genius  for  entertaining,  and  was 
the  envied  possessor  of  a  good  cook.  Even 
the  Doctor's  taciturnity  could  be  forgiven  him 


27 

when  one  remembered  the  unexceptionable 
quality  of  his  cellar.  As  Captain  Read  con- 
fided to  Miss  Channing,  "  It  was  like  drink- 
ing with  an  Egyptian  mummy,  but  this  par- 
ticular mummy,  to  be  sure,  footed  the  bills, 
and  that  made  a  world  of  difference." 

As  a  whole,  Madame's  friends  were  not  an 
ill-natured  swarm  of  ephemera,  and  only  par- 
took of  the  failings  of  their  class  as  well  as  its 
virtues.  Their  real  sting  consisted  in  the  con- 
viction, which  they  harbored  and  impressed 
upon  Isabel,  that  she  had  very  much  under- 
married  herself.  "  The  gray  mare  was  the 
better  horse,"  as  the  men  said  to  each  other. 

The  old  house  was  large,  and  under  the 
gay  young  mistress  the  silence  was  broken 
that  formerly  brooded  sanctuary -like  over 
the  great  reception-rooms.  There  were  im- 
promptu dances,  reels,  and  old-fashioned  co- 
tillons, there  were  tea-drinkings  and  games, 
merry  supper-parties  and  picnics,  rides  a- 
horseback,  and,  in  fact,  every  form  of  junket- 
ing with  which  the  early  part  of  the  century 
was  acquainted.  The  female  portion  of  the 
town  was  scandalized ;  the  old  women  held  up 


28 


their  hands  in  holy  horror,  and  gossiped  with 
bated  breath  over  stories  of  the  "  doings  at 
the  Wickfords',"  which,  as  often  as  not,  had 
no  foundation  in  fact. 

The  younger  members  of  society  were, 
perhaps,  not  so  rigidly  censorious,  and  had 
Madame  included  them  in  her  invitations,  as 
her  husband  wished,  she  might  have  avoided 
the  mortifying  social  ostracism  which  after- 
wards fell  upon  her.  But  for  the  present  her 
own  little  set  was  all  sufficient.  They  wrote 
in  each  others'  albums,  sketched  deformed 
Cupids  shooting  impossible  bows,  bleeding 
hearts,  and  the  like ;  the  women  exchanged 
patterns  for  tambour -work,  took  and  gave 
confidences,  copied  music,  and  made  abomi- 
nations before  the  Lord  in  Berlin  wool. 
There  were  duets  and  trios  with  the  male 
contingent,  and  sleepy  neighbors  anathema- 
tized "  The  Minute-gun  at  Sea,"  "  We  met, 
'twas  in  a  crowd,"  and  the  like  antiquated 
ditties  that  floated  out  into  the  perfumed 
night  through  open  windows. 

Individually,  the  Doctor  found  his  wife's 
friends  intolerably  stupid  company ;  their 


29 

gods  were  too  emphatically  not  his  gods  for 
much  mutual  interest  to  exist  between  them. 
However,  he  had  not  anticipated  the  coming 
of  their  guests  entirely  without  pleasure,  hop- 
ing that  the  variety  of  human  interest  about 
him  would  relieve  this  intolerable  watch  over 
the  death  of  his  ideal.  He  considered,  too, 
that  it  was  quite  possible  that  his  microscopic 
and  continued  observation  of  Isabel  might 
have  brought  on  a  kind  of  mental  strabismus, 
which  had  cost  him  his  sense  of  moral  pro- 
portion and  made  him  unfit  to  judge  her. 

But  he  had,  indeed,  counted  without  his 
hostess  when  he  hoped  for  a  betterment  in 
the  condition  of  his  home  life ;  for,  with  the 
advent  of  a  sympathetic  audience,  ten  mock- 
ing devils  worse  than  the  first  seemed  to 
have  entered  into  her.  She  spared  neither 
age  nor  physical  infirmity,  nor  did  she  stay 
her  ridicule  for  any  consideration  of  his  fam- 
ily feeling.  The  vagaries  and  absurdities  of 
his  relations  made  excellent  fun  for  her  city 
people,  and  the  very  knowledge  that  she 
was  in  a  measure  confounded  with  them  in- 
creased her  acute  sense  of  their  peculiarities, 


3Q 

and  made  her  more  anxious  to  disassociate 
herself  from  her  surroundings  in  the  eyes  of 
her  old  companions.  It  is  always  those  who 
laugh  most  who  are  most  fearful  of  ridicule, 
and  with  her  the  dread  of  being  absurd  be- 
fore her  own  little  coterie  was  overpowering. 

It  happened  once  that  she  followed  him 
into  his  office  after  one  of  these  bursts  of 
mimicry  where  his  paralytic  uncle  had  been 
the  subject  under  discussion.  Wickford  was 
disgusted  with  the  vulgarity  and  displeased 
with  the  heartlessness  of  it  all.  His  keen 
physician's  sympathy  taught  him  the  sanctity 
of  pain,  and  rendered  it  as  impossible  for  him 
to  laugh  at  deformity  as  to  have  joked  about 
the  good  name  of  his  dead  mother.  He  had 
come  away  to  be  alone  and  smooth  his 
soul's  ruffled  plumage  as  best  he  could. 

It  had  been  raining,  and  although  the  sun 
was  now  shining,  turning  the  dripping  leaves 
to  diamond -edged  jewels,  here  inside  the 
room  it  was  damp  and  the  atmosphere  heavy 
with  the  odor  of  wet  soot.  In  the  black 
fireplace  a  great  puddle  of  inky  water  had 
gathered. 


"  Why,  it  has  been  raining  down  the  chim- 
ney again  !"  Madame  exclaimed.  He  did  not 
appear  to  notice  her  as  she  entered,  but  con- 
tinued to  gaze  abstractedly  at  the  unsightly 
hearth.  She  was  sorry  to  have  hurt  him, 
only  she  thought  him  vastly  unreasonable  to 
be  offended,  so  she  touched  him  on  the  arm, 
saying,  half-laughingly : 

"Wake  up,  Gordon,  do,  for  goodness' 
sake !  Was  there  ever  such  a  man  !  Why 
didn't  you  call  Chloe  and  have  that  fireplace 
mopped  up  before  it  ruined  the  hearth-stone  ? 
Ugh !  It's  as  dank  as  a  grave  here.  Come 
outside,  I  want  you  to  drive  over  to  the 
Hills'  farm  with  Kittie  Johnston  and  me." 

He  turned  suddenly  and  pressed  her  face 
between  his  hands,  looking  long  and  ques- 
tioningly  into  her  eyes,  then — 

"  Pussy,"  he  asked,  "  would  you  laugh  at 
me,  too,  if  I  were  disfigured  ?  Good  God !  I'd 
rather — "  He  broke  off,  kissing  her  to  stop 
her  protestations,  and  turned  to  the  door,  say- 
ing :  "  No,  no,  dear,  make  no  promises.  Make 
no  promises.  Let  us  pray  you  may  never  be 
tempted." 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  city  visitors  took  their  flight  with  the 
arrival  of  midsummer  heat ;  yet  the  military 
visitors  still  kept  Madame  company,  and 
time  jogged  along  in  the  old  house  with  an 
ominous  creaking  of  wheels.  But  although 
the  rift  between  the  Doctor  and  his  wife 
grew  daily  greater,  neither  had  probably  any 
adequate  idea  of  its  width  until  an  incident, 
trivial  in  itself,  pricked  the  habitual  screen 
of  courtesy  with  which  he  shielded  her  from 
his  incipient  contempt. 

Wickford  returned  late  one  night  from  a 
business  journey  which  had  detained  him  a 
little  over  a  fortnight.  He  was  too  tired  and 
travel-stained  to  make  anything  but  bed  and 
supper  agreeable.  He  had  not  anticipated 
anything  but  a  solitary  home-coming,  and 
it  was  a  pleasant  surprise  to  find  Madame 
awaiting  his  arrival  and  considering  him  in  a 


33 

thousand  unaccustomed  ways.  She  insisted 
on  carving  his  cold  turkey  for  him,  and  min- 
gled with  her  solicitude  for  his  comfort  all 
the  little  bits  of  mild  local  news  she  had  gath- 
ered. Absence  had  laid  a  quieting  hand  on 
his  fevered  irritation,  the  power  of  her  beauty 
asserted  itself  anew,  and  her  little  efforts  to 
amuse  flattered  him.  At  last  she  ceased  talk- 
ing, and,  resting  her  chin  upon  her  clasped 
hand,  stared  at  him  with  a  quaint  look  of 
mock  desperation  on  her  pretty  face. 

"  Well,"  she  queried,  "  how  long  am  I 
to  wait?" 

The  Doctor  looked  up.  "  Why,  my  dear 
Isabel,  you  must  excuse  me ;  I  supposed 
you  had  eaten  supper  hours  ago.  Let  me 
help  you  immediately." 

11  Oh,  la !  Was  there  ever  such  an  exas- 
perating man  !"  she  laughed.  "  I  am  dying 
to  hear  news ;  news,  my  dear  Gordon,  not 
turkey,  is  what  I  am  hungry  for.  Who  did 
you  see?  What  did  you  hear?  Where  did 
you  go  ?  I  am  simply  mad  to  know  what 
is  going  on  in  the  city." 

Wickford   smiled    back  at   the  beautiful, 


34 

eager  face  across  the  table.  "  You  have  giv- 
en me  a  multitude  of  questions  to  answer  all 
in  a  breath,"  he  said.  "  But  I  will  do  the 
best  I  can.  Let  me  see.  Who  did  I  see? 
There  was  Colonel  Yates  and  Doctor  Pol- 
teney  ;  I  visited  them  yesterday.  Then,  of 
course,  I  called  on  my  old  friends  in  Main 
Street.  That  brings  me,  by-the-way,  to  what 
I  heard.  There  was  some  very  interesting 
talk  while  I  was  there  about  the  new  tariff ; 
it  seems  to  be  a  burning  question  among 
the  commercial  men  as  well  as  our  farming 
neighbors ;  Mr.  Fletcher  said — ' 

Madame  broke  out  in  a  peal  of  laugh- 
ter. "  For  Heaven's  sake,  Gordon,  did  you 
think  I  wanted  to  hear  political  news  ? 
There's  a  dear,  tell  me  how  Fanny  Fletcher 
was  doing  her  back  hair,  and  if  you  found 
out  the  particulars  of  Julia's  elopement." 

"  I  did  not  mention  that  unfortunate  es- 
capade. I  knew  it  must  be  a  painful  sub- 
ject to  her  family,"  Wickford  returned,  grave- 
ly. "  I  imagined  the  news  about  the  great 
political  movement  might  really  interest  you. 
However,  I  do  know  something  you  might 


35 

care  to  hear.  There  is  an  Italian  opera 
company  at  one  of  the  theatres — I  was  really 
too  busy  to  remember  which." 

"  Oh  !"  she  exclaimed,  with  sparkling  eyes. 
"  A  real  opera !  How  I  wish  I  could  have 
seen  it !  I  am  dying  to  know  all  about  it. 
Tell  away,  tell !" 

"Since  you  seem  to  be  amused,"  he  said, 
regretfully,  "  I  am  sorry  I  didn't  witness  a 
performance  ;  but  I  have  so  small  a  liking  for 
that  school  of  music  that  it  seemed  absurd 
to  waste  time  and  money  hearing  a  singer 
pursue  an  '  if '  or  '  and  '  through  the  whole 
gamut,  like  hounds  in  full  cry  after  a  fox. 
You  remember  what  Addison  says — " 

Madame's  slender  stock  of  patience  was 
running  low.  "  I  don't  care  what  Addison 
says,"  she  retorted.  "  Nor  do  I  ever  under- 
stand how  you  can  be  so  insensible  to  the 
beauties  of  music."  It  was  one  of  their 
stock  differences,  so  Gordon  braced  himself 
to  silent  endurance  in  punishment  for  his  un- 
lucky speech — expansiveness  usually  brought 
him  into  trouble — when,  to  his  astonishment, 
she  suddenly  stopped  her  tirade  in  mid-career 


36 

and,  running  round  the  table,  perched  herself 
on  the  arm  of  his  chair,  vowing  that  all  the 
music  in  Christendom  should  not  make  her 
quarrel  to-night.  Sitting  thus  with  her  hand 
on  his  shoulder  she  catechised  the  Doctor 
about  the  playhouses,  the  dresses  of  their  ac- 
quaintances, and  the  like,  but  with  such  poor 
success  that  she  was  glad  when  his  fatigue 
gave  her  an  excuse  for  escaping  to  bed. 

It  was  so  unusual  to  be  thus  petted  and 
made  much  of  that,  in  spite  of  physical  ex- 
haustion, Wickford  could  not  sleep  for  de- 
light and  wonder.  If,  indeed,  love  was  re- 
turning to  him  "  after  many  days,"  would  it 
not  be  sweetened  by  the  long  waiting  for 
her  slow -born  tenderness?  He  began  to 
build  castles  for  himself,  and,  although  she 
was  the  ever  -  present  heart  of  all  things,  he 
determined  that  in  their  new  relations  he 
would  carefully  refrain  from  any  effort  to 
key  her  nature  up  to  the  pitch  of  his  ideal. 
He  now  realized  what  had  been  the  discord- 
ant note  at  the  beginning  of  their  married 
life.  He  would  not  believe  she  was  vain  or 
untruthful.  Nothing  so  supremely  fair,  he 


37 

argued,  could  be  the  casket  of  such  mean 
vices.  She  had  imagination  in  excess,  that 
was  true ;  he  would  teach — no,  he  must  not  as- 
sume the  role  of  school -master  any  longer. 
He  would  make  allowances.  But  to  compro- 
mise was  to  admit  falsehood  in  her,  and  he 
tried  to  bully  his  convictions  into  the  belief 
that  he  was  mistaken.  His  memory  trav- 
elled back  and  forth  over  the  familiar  ave- 
nues, seeking  in  vain  a  clew  to  her  conduct 
in  a  thousand  instances  which  should  not 
lead  him  to  the  same  impasse — a  sore  convic- 
tion of  her  want  of  rectitude.  In  the  midst 
of  his  chaotic,  tossing  thoughts  a  suspicion 
began  to  crystallize  that  she  had  been  actu- 
ated by  some  ulterior  motive  in  this  new 
assumption  of  amiability.  She  had  wanted 
something,  and  was  buying  it  with  feigned 
affection.  Although  he  drove  the  unworthy 
thought  from  him,  it  recurred  insistently  in 
spite  of  his  angry  self-contempt. 

The  gray  dawn  found  him  still  sleeplessly 
tossing  with  wide,  strained  eyes.  At  last  the 
day  broke  rosy  and  splendid  over  a  steel- 
blue  sea.  He  would  go  out  in  the  garden, 


38 

he  determined,  and  in  the  rich  glory  of  the 
summer  flowers  forget  everything  save  that 
his  life  was  young  and  the  year  was  at  its 
full.  As  he  dressed  and  ran  down  the  steep 
stairway  he  knew  just  how  the  perfume  of 
the  roses  would  greet  him  through  the  open 
door,  how  the  long,  four -sided  grass-plots 
would  sparkle  with  dew,  and  here  and  there 
the  spider's  gossamer  would  be  spread  out 
to  bleach.  Yes,  he  would  go  down  to  the 
great  apple-tree,  where  he  could  see  the  top 
of  his  mother's  monument  stretching  above 
the  box-hedge,  and  all  these  ungentlemanly 
suspicions  would  take  unto  themselves  the 
wings  of  the  morning. 

"  The  wings  of  the  morning,"  he  mur- 
mured ;  "  it  is  a  beautiful  image.  I  will  go 
seek  them,  and  they  shall  waft  my  burdens 
to  the  uttermost  ends  of  the  earth."  So 
meditating,  he  pushed  back  the  bolt  and 
stepped  out  into — a  desert,  whose  tumbled 
desolation  was  only  appreciable  when  con- 
trasted with  the  picture  his  imagination  sup- 
plied. 

The  old   greensward  was  gone,  the  lilies 


39 

dug  up,  the  roses  cut  down,  the  bridal-wreath 
planted  at  his  christening  destroyed,  and  of 
his  mother's  violets  not  a  plant  remained. 
Even  the  giant  hollyhocks  over  in  the  cor- 
ner of  the  hedge,  that  yearly  waved  the  sum- 
mer such  a  brilliant  farewell,  had  been  com- 
pletely exterminated.  There  remained  no 
trace  of  the  old  garden  save  a  few  pear  and 
apple  trees,  which  had  been  spared  for  their 
utility's  sake.  Fresh  gravelled  paths  traced 
odd  geometric  patterns  in  the  brown  earth, 
and  on  these  beds  stood  plants,  their  droop- 
ing heads  and  perfunctory  manner  of  holding 
themselves  marking  them  as  new-comers  to 
the  soil. 

Some  were  large  growths  that  showed 
their  artificial  breeding,  and  were  evidently 
getting  their  first  taste  of  mother-earth ; 
others  were  tiny  seedlings.  But  everywhere 
bloom  and  leaf  proclaimed  them  members  of 
one  family ;  they  were,  without  exception, 
calceolarias.  Some  glared  at  him  with  scarlet 
faces,  others  protruded  great  spotted  under- 
lips  of  brown  and  buff.  There  were  blos- 
soms with  hairy,  yellow  mouths  too.  But  all 


40 

were  equally  scentless  and  gaudy — "  like  her," 
he  thought,  bitterly.  He  recognized  them  as 
the  cultivated  sisters  of  the  snap-dragons  he 
played  with  as  a  boy,  squeezing  their  scarlet 
jaws  that  he  might  look  down  the  flowery 
throats  at  the  long  stamens,  which  were,  he 
said,  the  dragons'  tongues.  There  was  here 
even  an  exaggerated  suggestion  of  this  im- 
aginary affinity  with  evil.  The  swollen,  pout- 
ing flower-faces  reminded  him,  somehow,  of 
poisonous  things;  these  unperfumed,  soul- 
less blossoms  were  suggestive  of  all  that  he 
would  have  gladly  believed  foreign  to  his 
wife.  He  could  certainly,  at  the  cost  of  a 
scene  or  two,  have  the  garden  restored  to 
something  like  its  former  condition  ;  but  the 
sentiment,  the  inner  heart  of  it  all,  was,  alas, 
gone  beyond  recalling. 

It  added  a  second  sting  to  his  sense  of  loss 
that  here  was  a  simple  explanation  of  all  her 
last  night's  tenderness,  then  he  thought  bit- 
terly of  his  foolish  dreaming.  The  indirect- 
ness about  her  method  of  meeting  the  con- 
sequences of  an  offence  swelled  the  long  list 
of  her  prevarications,  and  carried  away  an- 


other  one  of  the  defences  with  which  he 
tried  to  fortify  his  belief  in  her  truth. 

"  If  she  had  only  been  frank  about  it,"  he 
thought,  as  he  fumbled  at  the  lock  of  his 
office  door.  The  two  rooms  were  semi- 
detached, and  possessed  a  separate  entrance 
where  patients  could  go  out  and  in  through 
the  garden  without  disturbing  the  household. 
As  no  one  outside  of  his  immediate  family 
knew  yet  of  his  return,  he  felt  reasonably  safe 
from  intrusion  here.  It  was  a  place  where 
he  might  be  alone  to  face  his  disappoint- 
ment, and  master  his  anger  before  he  met 
his  wife,  or  could  deal  reasonably  with  her. 
She  had  at  once  defied  and  robbed  him  of 
his  dearest  possession.  He  knew  if  he  spoke 
now  he  would  say  vastly  too  much. 

As  the  lock  yielded  under  his  impatient 
hands  he  heard  a  shuffling  step  behind  him, 
and,  turning,  faced  his  mother's  old  factotum, 
the  presiding  genius  of  the  garden.  The  old 
man  stood  twirling  his  cap  in  his  earth-stained 
fingers.  The  fustian  breeches  and  knitted 
stockings  he  wore  were  also  spotted  with 
new  mould,  but  his  bent  shoulders  seemed 


42 

to  straighten  themselves  as  he  looked  up  into 
the  eyes  of  the  young  master  he  loved.  As 
Wickford  gazed  at  the  ugly  Irish  face  that 
beamed  welcome  on  him,  the  hope  flashed 
through  his  brain  that  there  might  be  a 
mistake  somewhere — the  gardener,  perhaps, 
misunderstood  some  trivial  order,  and  worked 
this  dreary  ruin  on  his  own  account;  even  yet 
he  might  bear  Isabel  blameless. 

"This  is  a  bad  affair, O'Connor,"  Wickford 
said,  pointing  to  the  bare  brown  beds  and 
the  sickly  plants  upon  them.  "  How  did  it 
come  about?" 

"  Sure,  Master  Gordon,  it's  meself  that 
should  be  askin'  that  same  question,"  replied 
the  old  man,  with  no  little  reproach  in  his 
manner.  "  Your  lady  gave  me  the  orders, 
but  I  was  for  holdin'  out  agin  cuttin'  up  all 
the  pretty  things  your  mother  planted — may 
the  saints  preserve  her !  I  wanted  to  write  you 
a  letter  to  tell  you  what  the  young  Madame 
was  afther,  and  ask  if  it  was  accordin'  to  your 
taste.  Sez  I,  '  Madame,  maybe  you  know  a 
dale  more  about  these  plants  than  I  do  who 
have  been  tendin'  'em  since  afore  you  was 


43 

born,  but  maybe  again  you  don't.  I'm  not 
forgettin',  though,  that  the  first  gardener  lost 
his  job  without  a  charakter  all  along  of 
takin'  a  woman's  advice — bad  cess  to  her ! — 
an'  I'm  waitin'  for  my  young  master's  word 
before  I  begin.'  Sez  I — " 

"  Well,  well,  why  didn't  you  write?"  inter- 
rupted the  other,  impatiently.  O'Connor 
was  destroying  his  new-found  excuses,  and  it 
irritated  the  Doctor. 

"  An'  I  did  so,  your  honor.  But  you  never 
came,  and  sorra  a  word  did  ye  even  sind  to 
yer  old  servant,  till  a  week  gone  Thursday 
my  lady  she  comes  out  here  with  a  letter  in 
her  hand,  and  sez, '  John,'  sez  she,  a-shakin'  it 
at  me,  '  I'm  mistress  in  this  house,  and  mis- 
tress in  this  garden  too,  I'll  have  ye  to  under- 
stand, an',  as  sure  as  there's  a  sky  above  us, 
out  of  it  ye  go  if  my  orders  bean't  obeyed, 
and  that  quickly,  an'  here  is  his  honor's  letter 
to  prove  it.'  Well,  I  haven't  lived  to  my  time 
o'  life  without  1'arnin'  that  ivery  pretty  live 
woman  gets  what  she  wants  mostly,  spite  of 
dead  people's  wishin's,  an',  savin'  yer  honor's 
pardon,  your  blessed  mother's  been  in  heaven 


44 

nigh  on  five  years.  Thinks  I,  Master  Gordon 
has  given  up  as  usual.  So  when  she  got 
some  people  down  from  the  city  I  made  no 
more  bother,  and  between  us  we  put  the 
garden  in  the  mess  it's  in  now,  with  all  them 
sick  little  plants  that  the  Virgin  won't  favor." 

"  Did  she — did  she  say  I  had  ordered  the 
work  done?  Did  she  show  you  the  letter?" 
Wickford  asked,  but  his  voice  sounded  far 
off  and  strange  to  him,  and  his  throat  con- 
tracted as  if  he  were  strangling. 

"  Sure  she  told  me  right  enough,  and  I 
saw  the  outside  of  the  letter,  but  not  the 
writin'.  It  hurt  me  heart,  sir,  so  it  did,  to 
be  cuttin'  down  the  plants  I've  been  nursin' 
since  before  you  was  knee-high  to  a  duck. 
You  did  write,  didn't  you  ?"  queried  the  old 
man,  peering  up  into  the  set  white  face 
above  him.  Wickford  made  some  sort  of 
rejoinder,  he  never  knew  exactly  what,  and 
turned  into  his  office,  locking  the  door  be- 
hind him.  There,  alone  with  his  discovery, 
he  set  himself  to  face  the  calamity  which 
had  overtaken  him.  In  the  bitterness  of  his 
conviction  that  she  would  lie,  lie  even  to 


45 

gain  a  childish  whim,  he  looked  back  upon 
the  time  of  his  slumbering  suspicion  as  on  a 
very  heaven  in  comparison  with  his  present 
painful  certainty. 

He  threw  himself  into  a  high-backed  chair, 
and  sat  staring  at  the  empty  fireplace,  his 
head  bowed  under  a  sense  of  personal  dis- 
grace that  was  almost  intolerable.  Anything 
but  this  he  could  have  forgiven ;  but  to  pre- 
varicate— nay,  to  lie,  for,  though  the  word 
stung  him,  there  was  no  other  that  fitted  her 
proceedings  —  gave  a  coup-de-grdce  to  his 
lingering  affection.  Time  slipped  by;  the 
hot,  heavy  air  of  the  closed  room,  charged 
with  the  odor  of  many  drugs,  was  stifling,  but 
the  abyss  of  his  mental  dejection  made  him 
oblivious  to  time  and  condition.  The  and- 
irons blinked  at  him,  and  the  broken  sun- 
beam stole  unheeded  through  the  chinks  of 
the  closed  shutter,  and  crawled  inch  by  inch 
across  the  floor  as  the  morning  advanced. 
Some  one  came  knocking;  he  heard  the  but- 
ler's voice  calling  him  to  breakfast.  The  very 
thought  of  meeting  Isabel  made  him  shrink 
with  a  positive  physical  sickness.  How  was 


he  to  take  up  the  burden  of  his  life  now  that 
he  knew?     And  yet,  did  he  know  ? 

Was  it  fair  to  condemn  her  unheard  on  the 
testimony  of  a  servant,  even  if  he  had  found 
O'Connor  habitually  truthful  for  twenty 
years?  After  all,  he  had  received  no  letter 
from  the  gardener,  and  his  sense  of  justice  an- 
swered quickly  to  the  call  of  an  almost  mori- 
bund affection.  There  was  yet  a  chance  she 
might  be  able  to  explain.  How  he  prayed 
that  she  might — prayed  as  people  do  in  great 
extremity,  with  convulsively  clasped  hands 
and  silently  moving  lips  ! 


CHAPTER  V 

MADAME  WICKFORD  was  not  enjoying  her 
usual  morning  nap  either.  She  was  perfectly 
aware  of  the  outrage  to  his  sensibilities  that 
she  had  committed ;  but  as  she  considered 
herself  well  within  her  rights  as  house-mis- 
tress, and  from  experience  felt  that  she  could 
rely  upon  his  just  temper  answering  her  ap- 
peal to  reason,  she  was  only  excited  and  not 
alarmed.  After  all,  she  thought,  it  was  as 
much  her  garden  now  as  it  had  once  been 
his  mother's.  Of  the  real  danger  of  her  po- 
sition she  was  totally  ignorant.  She  had 
wanted  the  garden  done,  and  done  quickly, 
before  he  could  return  and  interpose.  The 
obstinacy  of  the  old  Irishman  maddened  her, 
as  opposition  usually  did ;  therefore,  with  her 
characteristic  impetuosity,  she  applied  the 
first  expedient  that  occurred  to  her,  con- 
fiding in  her  personal  charm  to  carry 


48 

her  through  when  the    reckoning    time  ar- 
rived. 

However,  there  is  no  need  of  losing  points 
in  a  game,  even  when  one  is  sure  of  win- 
ning, so  she  gave  more  than  usual  care  to 
her  breakfast  costume,  although  she  was  at 
all  times  too  appreciative  of  her  own  beauty 
to  be  careless  of  its  setting.  As  she  came 
down  the  staircase  her  short  and  scanty 
"  India  muslin  "  skirts  clung  so  tightly  that 
they  half  revealed  the  movements  of  her 
long,  supple  limbs.  Her  thin,  low -heeled 
slippers  were  attached  by  black  ribbons  that 
crossed  and  recrossed  her  ankles  until  they 
disappeared  under  the  embroidered  hem  of 
her  petticoat.  Great  puffed  sleeves  en- 
hanced by  contrast  the  slenderness  of  her 
short  waist,  and  the  full  column  of  her  throat 
rose  superbly  out  of  its  setting  of  lace  and 
frills.  The  little  head  was  heavy  with  its 
wealth  of  spun  gold,  which  fell  in  curls  on 
either  side  of  her  face,  and  towered  above 
her  in  a  huge  bow  of  hair  supported  by  an 
immense  Spanish  comb.  There  was  a  fresh- 
ness on  her  cheeks  and  a  dewy  look  about 


49 

her  eyes  that  seemed  to  answer  to  the  glory 
of  the  new  day,  and  to  proclaim  her  an  in- 
tegral part  of  the  summer  morning. 

She  could  not  find  him  in  either  hall  or 
rooms.  She  looked  into  the  wasted  garden, 
but  there  was  no  one,  save  O'Connor  under 
the  apple-trees  tying  up  the  weak-stemmed 
flowers,  his  shoulders  expressive  of  rebel- 
lious contempt.  No  one  to  see  her,  no  one 
to  recognize  how  beautiful  she  looked  in  her 
new  frock.  It  occurred  to  her  Wickford 
might  be  over  in  the  office ;  so,  gathering  her 
skirts  well  out  of  the  way  of  damp  and  soil, 
she  tripped  across,  and  began  to  beat  so  vig- 
orous a  tattoo  on  the  closed  door  that  it 
made  an  impression  even  on  the  senses  of 
the  unhappy  man  within. 

He,  like  most  conscientious  people  of  nar- 
row imaginations,  endowed  the  culprit  with 
his  own  adequate  sense  of  the  vulgarity  and 
disgrace  of  falsehood.  Nor  did  it  ever  occur 
to  him  that  had  such  an  appreciation  of  its 
nature  existed,  the  temptation  would  have 
been  robbed  of  all  charm,  and  have,  therefore, 
ceased  to  allure.  He  had  been  thinking  of 


her  as  all  besmirched  with  a  contemptible 
vice,  and  this  moral  aspect  so  completely  oc- 
cupied his  mind  that  her  jocund  beauty 
burst  upon  him  with  a  strange  sense  of  un- 
familiarity  —  a  kind  of  revelation  of  loveli- 
ness that  gave  him  heart  to  hope  again. 
The  old  protest  stirred  in  him  anew.  The 
custom  of  believing  that  pretty  is  as  pretty 
looks,  which  is  taught  even  in  the  nursery 
fairy-tales,  had  struck  firm  root  in  his  char- 
acter; and  though  away  from  her  he  could 
think  and  weigh  evidence,  the  spell  of  her 
physical  beauty  dwarfed  his  judgment.  It 
seemed  preposterous  to  associate  anything 
cowardly  with  the  proud  perfection  of  the 
woman  before  him.  For  a  moment  his  soul 
was  besieged  by  the  thought  that  this  was, 
indeed,  a  time  when  ignorance  was  bliss. 
Perhaps  he  had  better  go  on  doubting  than 
put  his  faith  to  the  test  where  so  much 
was  at  stake.  Yet  the  doubt  itself  was,  he 
felt,  an  insult  to  her  if  innocent,  a  gross  in- 
justice to  a  life-long  servant  if,  on  the  con- 
trary, she  were  guilty.  He  would  ask  her, 
and  she  would  tell  him  the  truth,  he  proudly 


decided,  looking  at  the  regal  carriage  of  her 
head. 

"  Come  in,  dear !"  he  said.  "  I  have  some 
questions  to  put  to  you.  Sit  down."  And 
he  motioned  her  to  a  chair. 

"  Gracious  powers  !"  exclaimed  she,  look- 
ing at  his  drawn  face.  "  But  you  are  ill — are 
you  not?" 

"  No,"  he  returned,  "  not  ill,  but  very  unhap- 
py. It  was  a  surprise  to  me  to  find  the  garden — " 

"  What  a  pother !"  she  broke  in.  "  Is  it 
all  about  a  few  flowers,  of  so  common  a  vari- 
ety that  you  may  see  their  like  in  any 
kitchen-garden?" 

Her  defiant  attitude  angered  him,  and  he 
cut  her  short  with  a  peremptory  gesture 
that  silenced  her  with  astonishment ;  then, 
waiting  a  moment  to  regain  command  of  his 
voice,  he  began : 

"  Of  course  you  are  perfectly  aware  that 
my  mother's  garden  is  destroyed  beyond 
repair,  that  the  best  part  of  what  I  call 
home  has  been  laid  waste  to  gratify  a  fool- 
ish fancy,  which  has  neither  beauty  nor 
charm  to  excuse  it.  Your  vandalism — " 


52 

"  Vandalism,  indeed  !"  said  she,  with  a  toss 
of  her  head.  But  he  continued  without  no- 
ticing her  interruptions,  speaking  in  a  sin- 
gularly low,  distinct  voice. 

"  It  was  vandalism  of  the  worst  kind — 
heartless  vandalism  at  that.  However,  let 
me  congratulate  you,  Madame,  upon  having 
succeeded  in  producing  altogether  the  ugli- 
est garden  I  ever  saw.  My  servant  tells  me 
that  he  expostulated  and  sought  in  vain  to 
restrain  you  until  I  should  have  returned. 
He  says  he  wrote  to  me,  that  he  awaited  a 
reply  to  his  letter  which  I  never  received, 
until  you  gave  him  orders  to  go  on  with 
this  work  of  demolition — orders  which  pur- 
ported to  come  from  me,  and  which  we  both 
know  you  never  received." 

So  far  he  had  controlled  himself  admirably, 
although  her  stormy  face  and  angry  protests 
robbed  his  speech  of  gentleness ;  but  now  the 
fear  of  what  she  would  say  shook  him  like  an 
ague.  He  strode  up  to  her,  and,  seizing  her 
wrists  with  unconscious  violence,  glared  down 
at  her  in  an  anguish  of  uncertainty.  If  she 
harbored  any  latent  intention  of  facing  the 


53 

matter  out  on  open  lines,  his  set  mouth  and 
burning  eyes  frightened  it  away. 

"  Let  me  go,  Gordon,"  she  cried  ;  "  you 
hurt  me,  you  hurt  my  wrists." 

He  shook  them  impatiently.  "Answer 
me !"  he  hissed,  "  and  tell  me  the  truth — if 
you  never  did  before." 

But  in  that  moment  of  time  her  brain  had 
been  working  rapidly,  and  in  the  midst  of 
her  astonishment  and  terror  she  had  formed 
her  decision — the  letter  must  have  been  lost. 
O'Connor's  peculiarities  of  penmanship  and 
spelling  were  very  much  against  its  ever 
turning  up  again.  As  matters  stood  there 
was  no  proof  that  it  had  ever  been  written. 
The  whole  circumstance  simply  resolved  it- 
self into  a  case  of  assertion  against  assertion 
— her  word  against  the  old  Irishman's.  With 
a  sudden  movement  she  twisted  herself  free, 
and  sprang  up  facing  Wickford  furiously. 

"  You  are  behaving  like  a  ruffian,"  she 
said,  lifting  her  angry  eyes  to  his.  "  I  will 
defend  myself  for  my  own  good  pleasure, 
understand,  and  not  from  any  regard  for 
you  or  your  estimate  of  me.  You  have 


54 

gossiped  with  a  servant  about  my  doings, 
which  is  despicable  enough,  at  any  rate. 
And  now  on  this  valuable  testimony  you 
presume  to  accuse  me  of  falsehood."  She 
had  instinctively  taken  her  one  line  of  de- 
fence. Her  red,  bruised  wrists  pleaded  against 
him,  and  covered  him  with  a  sense  of  shame 
at  his  ungovernable  excitement.  This  out- 
break had  completely  reversed  their  respec- 
tive positions ;  as  she  presented  it,  he  was 
now  the  offender,  to  be  arraigned  before  an 
injured  wife. 

"  It's  a  pack  of  lies,  of  course,"  she  con- 
tinued ;  "  but  it  never  occurred  to  you  that 
the  old  man  was  wild  to  try  the  newer  plants, 
and  merely  got  up  this  absurd  story  under  the 
stress  of  your  badgering.  As  you  remem- 
ber, no  letter  came,  and  I  don't  suppose  you 
accuse  the  whole  postal  service  of  being  in 
league  against  the  existence  of  your  moth- 
er's precious  garden.  You  would  hardly 
have  dared  use  the  physical  violence  to 
O'Connor  with  which  you  have  treated  me. 
He  was  a  man  and  could  defend  him- 
self." 


55 

"  I  protest,"  he  murmured.  "  I  did  not 
intend — " 

"  Oh,  spare  me !"  she  interrupted.  "  I  have 
but  little  more  to  say  before  I  am  done.  It 
was  I  who  was  persuaded  into  changing  the 
garden,  therefore  I  had  no  object  in  fabri- 
cating orders  from  you,  nor  would  I  allow 
any  servant  in  my  house  to  bandy  words 
with  me  for  an  instant.  You  must,  I  hope, 
see  by  now  that  this  accusation  is  as  im- 
probable as  it  is  untrue,  and  I  hope  that 
you'll  understand  that  O'Connor  must  go 
immediately.  Either  he  or  I  leave  this 
house  before  night." 

"  But  he  has  grown  old  in  my  service," 
Wickford  expostulated. 

"  And  I,"  she  retorted,  "  have  that  unfort- 
unate prospect  before  me.  I  will  leave  you 
to  choose  between  us."  Wherewith  she 
swept  out  of  the  room  as  the  servant  depos- 
ited a  package  of  letters  on  the  table.  She 
had  silenced  him  effectually,  and  he  turned 
to  open  his  correspondence,  in  a  nervous  de- 
sire to  find  something  that  might  change 
the  current  of  thoughts  which  raced  through 


56 

his  brain,  now  shadowed  by  doubt,  now  bright 
with  surety.  But  everything  was  tinctured 
by  disappointment  with  his  own  bearing  in 
an  interview  in  which  he  had  hoped  to  be  so 
judicially  cool,  so  perfectly  self-contained. 

There  were  some  medical  journals  for- 
warded from  the  city,  a  newspaper,  and  one 
or  two  letters  from  patients.  He  opened 
them,  but  could  not  command  his  attention 
sufficiently  to  grasp  their  meaning  as  yet. 
He  was  astonished  to  discover  a  packet  di- 
rected in  the  hand  of  his  man  of  business, 
whom  he  had  left  only  two  days  before  in 
town. 

It  startled  him  to  be  thus  closely  followed 
by  a  letter  from  that  quarter,  and  he  opened 
it  quickly,  dreading  some  new  form  of  dis- 
aster, he  hardly  knew  what.  An  enclosure 
fell  to  the  floor ;  he  let  it  lie  as  he  hurriedly 
read  on  through  the  usual  excuses  that  ac- 
company delayed  letters — "  a  careless  clerk, 
changes  in  the  office,"  and  so  forth — that 
preceded  his  lawyer's  expressions  of  regret 
at  the  oversight. 

Wickford  sickened  with  fear  as  he  bent 


57 

down  and  picked  up  the  belated  letter.  It 
was  a  queerly  folded,  rather  dirty  paper, 
sealed  with  a  thumb-mark  on  red  wax. 

"  To  His  Honor  Gordon  Wickford,  who  is  a 
doctor  when  he  is  home,  but  now  is  visiting  in 
P with  Mr.  Johnson" 

He  broke  the  seal,  and  the  letter  he  had 
devoutly  hoped  never  to  see  stared  him  in 
the  face. 

"Your  honor,"  it  ran,  "the  mistres  is 
thretnin  to  tare  up  the  garden  i  am  not 
plesed  so  to  do  untill  you  say  so  so  you  had 
beter  com  horn  imegitly  if  not  sooner.  The 
second  grass  is  growen  not  to  say  nee  hi  but 
we  nead  some  clover  seeds  wich  please  bring 
when  you  com  wich  i  hope  will  be  imegitly 
John  O'Connor  gardener." 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  Doctor  did  not  appear  until  late  that 
afternoon,  when  the  servants  saw  him  enter 
the  still-room  where  Madame  was  busy  with 
her  preserves.  They  were  locked  in  for  an 
hour  together,  and  the  listening  negroes 
could  hear  their  voices  rising  and  falling  in 
angry  tones.  Then  followed  the  sound  of  a 
woman's  sobbing,  and  the  Doctor  talking  in 
a  low  voice.  At  last  the  key  grated  in  the 
lock,  the  door  opened  suddenly,  and  he 
strode  out,  calling  to  his  man  to  follow  as 
the  servants  fell  to  various  occupations  with 
suspicious  haste. 

That  evening  my  lady  met  William  pass- 
ing down  the  hall  with  his  arms  full  of  the 
Doctor's  clothing. 

"What  are  you  doing?"  she  queried. 
"  Those  things  should  be  taken  up  in  the 
green-room." 


59 

"  I  begs  your  pardon,  Mistess,"  replied 
the  man.  "  Massa  giv'  me  de  order  to  fix 
he's  things  in  de  room  next  de  office.  He 
say  he  gwine  to  sleep  dere."  So  this  was 
the  end.  Oh,  if  she  had  only  known  earlier, 
only  understood  what  she  was  losing  before 
it  had  been  lost  indeed !  She  was  one  of 
those  women  cursed  with  the  masculine  trait 
of  valuing  that  object  most  highly  which  is 
hardest  to  obtain  and  most  difficult  to  hold. 

In  the  midst  of  his  hot  reproaches  and 
cutting  speech  a  new-born  respect  for  her 
husband  had  kept  her  silent.  When  he 
went  out  of  the  room,  leaving  her  sobbing 
on  the  hard,  round  bolsters  of  the  old  sofa, 
she  did  not  realize  that  such  a  flood  of  in- 
vective could  never  pass  the  lips  of  a  self- 
contained  spirit  without  blurring  all  the 
tender  outlines  of  his  love.  She  now  under- 
stood the  strength  of  his  passion  for  the  first 
time,  and  recognized  that  so  high  a  pressure 
of  feeling  was  alone  possible  in  a  nature 
strong  to  resist  and  strong  to  bear.  Up  to 
this  time  she  had  been  conscious  of  a  sense 
of  superiority,  as  of  one  more  au  fait  with 


6o 


the  latest  movements  in  the  fashionable 
world,  less  ridden  by  the  narrowing  tenden- 
cies of  sectarianism  in  religion,  and  broader 
in  her  mental  atmosphere.  Indeed,  she 
had  posed  to  herself  as  one  unfortunately 
matched  with  a  slower  yoke-fellow,  whose 
good  qualities  must  be  rated  at  their  full 
value  to  render  them  commensurate  with  his 
want  of  spirit.  It  was  a  revelation  to  be 
bullied  by  him.  In  the  intense  ennui  of  a 
village  life  even  a  disagreeable  incident  was 
welcome,  if  sufficiently  unexpected.  Recon- 
ciliation she  believed  possible,  nor  did  she 
see  that  love  which  is  patched  with  mutual 
excuses  is  a  sorry  garment  in  which  to 
wrap  a  sensitive  spirit.  Explanations  rather 
pleased  her,  it  had  always  been  so  easy  to 
get  what  she  wanted,  and  rely  on  her  charm 
to  mask  the  obstinate  pertinacity  with  which 
she  held  to  her  desire.  As  she  thought  of 
it  she  smiled  in  anticipation,  and  so  thinking 
arose  and  went  to  her  room,  where  she 
bathed  her  red  eyes,  and  dropped  off  to 
sleep  like  a  child  tired  with  crying.  When 
Isabel  came  down  refreshed  and  armed  for 


6i 


the  fray  in  full  panoply,  she  might,  indeed, 
have  relied  on  her  physical  beauty  to  carry 
her  through  worse  straits  than  this,  but  she 
had  been  unfortunate  enough  to  marry  a 
man  with  an  ideal  whom  the  mere  excel- 
lence of  outward  seeming  ceased  to  attract 
when  his  respect  for  her  spirit  was  mori- 
bund. It  is  not  alone  to  the  individual  who 
harbors  it  that  ideality  sometimes  proves  a 
scourge  ;  it  has  a  way  of  whipping  the  ideal- 
ist's neighbors  as  well. 

The  window  was  open  on  the  garden,  and 
the  summer  air  fluttered  the  curtains  to  and 
fro;  it  made  the  candles  gutter  in  their  silver 
sticks,  notwithstanding  their  tall  glass  shades, 
and  lifted  the  light  curls  on  either  side  of 
Madame's  face  as  she  looked  across  the  table 
at  her  husband.  The  negro  butler  came  and 
went  with  the  dishes,  the  Doctor  answered 
her  questions  courteously,  but  never  sought 
to  catch  the  clews  of  talk  which  she  indus- 
triously threw  out  to  him.  In  the  stillness 
between  her  tentative  efforts  at  conversation 
the  clicking  of  the  silver  and  china  seemed 
preternaturally  loud,  and  the  cry  of  the  cicada 


62 


outside  in  the  shrubbery  was  almost  deafen- 
ing. She  looked  in  his  blue  eyes,  but  she 
could  find  nothing  there.  They  reflected  no 
answering  ray  of  tenderness,  and  surveyed 
her  critically  without  even  apparent  recogni- 
tion of  her  beauty.  She  remembered  he  had 
worn  the  same  expression  when  he  had  set 
her  Blenheim  spaniel's  leg.  "  I  am  only  a 
'  subject '  to  him,  after  all,"  she  thought. 

It  was  according  to  her  nature  to  become 
irritable  under  even  temporary  defeat.  She 
felt  a  sense  of  injured  innocence  too,  for  had 
she  not  tried  to  be  pleasant?  Her  good  in- 
tentions were  so  patent  to  her  own  eyes  that 
they  hid  the  complexion  of  her  past  of- 
fences. Therefore  she  could  not  understand 
why  he  did  not  respond  more  promptly  to 
her  flag  of  truce.  The  irritation  increased 
her  characteristic  disregard  of  consequences, 
and  she  broke  out  at  last : 

"  What  are  you  sulking  about,  anyhow  ? 
I've  done  my  best  to  talk  on  fifty  different 
topics,  and  you  let  them  drop  one  after  the 
other  so  hard  1  can  almost  hear  them  fall. 
At  the  worst  the  garden  is  only  in  decent 


63 

order — certainly  I  had  a  right  to  cut  down  a 
few  common  old  flowers — and  here  you  are 
sulking,  if  you  please,  when,  by  rights,  it  is  I 
who  am  the  injured  party.  You  are  per- 
fectly insufferable,  Gordon." 

He  deliberately  laid  down  his  knife  and 
fork  and  stared  at  her ;  his  eyes  blazed  with 
green  lights.  Then  he  quietly  sent  the  but- 
ler away  on  some  pretext  before  he  began 
in  measured  tones. 

"  Madame,  it  is,  indeed,  my  misfortune  to 
have  given  you  a  right  in  my  house  and  a 
claim  upon  my  forbearance.  God  knows, 
were  I  lucky  enough  to  be  free  again,  no 
persuasion  of  wealth,  no  temptation  of  beau- 
ty, should  shackle  me  to  so  miserable  a  des- 
tiny as  that  of  being  husband  to  a  liar.  You 
have  neither  sensibility  nor  decorum  ;  your 
cheap  wit  is  distasteful  to  me,  your  explana- 
tions odious.  Had  you  only  uprooted  my 
mother's  garden,  it  would  have  been  enough 
cause  for  serious  anger;  but  that  is  not  your 
greatest  offence.  Keep  the  flowers  as  you 
like,  now ;  you  have  destroyed  more  than 
that,  for  by  your  deliberate  falsehood  you 


64 

have  killed  my  respect,  my  love  for  you. 
Damn  it,  Madame,  I  stand  no  more  badger- 
ing in  my  own  house,  either  now  or  hereafter." 
His  anger  flared  up  at  the  last  to  a  white 
rage.  He  sprang  up,  overturning  his  chair 
with  a  crash,  and  strode  out  of  the  room  be- 
fore she  had  time  to  collect  herself.  In  a 
moment  she  heard  the  door  of  his  office 
bang  behind  him,  and  through  the  silent 
halls  of  the  old  house  imagined  she  could 
catch  the  gratings  of  the  bolt  in  its  staple. 

So  it  was  all  about  that  despicable  old 
Irishman  !  Well,  Wickford  could  do  as  he 
pleased,  there  was  no  more  crying  for  her 
now ;  her  face  was  flushed  with  anger  as  she 
made  her  way  into  the  parlor.  If  he  wished 
himself  free  of  her,  God  knew  she  was  pretty 
enough  to  win  favor  from  other  men.  Yet, 
somehow,  the  appreciation  of  strangers  had 
suddenly  grown  tasteless  to  her.  She  had, 
tucked  away  somewhere  in  her  heart,  a  drop 
of  real  affection  for  her  husband,  and  that 
modicum  of  genuine  feeling  now  began  to 
leaven  her  whole  thoughts.  If  she  had  cared 
for  him  a  little  more,  or  even  a  little  less, 


65 

self-respect  might  have  aided  her  at  this 
pass.  But  the  sense  of  rejected  affection 
goaded  her,  and  there  was  no  underlying 
stratum  of  principle  to  support  her  against 
temptation.  She  was  dominated  by  the  in- 
stinct of  a  strong  animal — to  strike  back  when 
it  was  offended ;  she  would  strike,  and  strike 
home,  too,  she  thought.  If  he  did  not  realize 
how  precious  a  possession  he  held  she  would 
teach  him  her  value  by —  And  at  this  mo- 
ment the  servant  announced  Captain  Read. 
The  weapon  lay  to  her  hand,  and  she  was  in 
a  temper  to  use  it. 

As  the  tall,  broad-shouldered  man  entered 
he  was  obliged  to  bow  his*curly  head  in  the 
low  doorway.  Although  he  wore  the  white 
stock  and  bottle-green  coat  of  a  civilian,  there 
was  a  military  suggestion  in  the  carriage  of 
his  whole  body  and  the  graceful  promptness 
of  his  movements  that  proclaimed  his  pro- 
fession. Somehow  he  possessed  the  danger- 
ous faculty  of  making  the  men  about  him  ap- 
pear ill-dressed  and  slouching,  which  quality 
had  been  the  cause  of  several  broken  engage- 
ments marking  the  gallant  Captain's  course 


66 


through  the  towns  at  which  he  had  been  sta- 
tioned from  time  to  time.  His  character 
was  neither  very  good  nor  very  bad ;  its 
strong  traits  were  a  certain  happy-go-lucky 
philosophy  with  which  he  looked  upon  life, 
a  fund  of  brute  courage,  and  a  dangerous 
liking  for  pretty  women  wherever  he  found 
them.  Madame  Wickford  was  pretty  enough, 
Heaven  knows,  and  recognized  his  jokes  with 
flattering  rapidity ;  besides,  she  happened  to 
be  the  discontented  wife  of  a  rich  man,  and 
the  house  was  a  pleasant  one  for  lounging. 
The  cook  was  good,  and  there  was  wine  in 
plenty.  Although  the  Doctor  drank  little 
himself,  he  was  an  irreproachable  host  as  far 
as  passing  the  bottle  went.  So  if  the  Cap- 
tain was  to  be  stationed  out  of  the  world  for 
a  time,  "  these  were  mighty  pleasant  quar- 
ters," and,  to  do  him  justice,  he  made  the 
most  of  his  opportunity. 

Such  was  the  man  who  opportunely  ap- 
peared to  add  point  to  Isabel's  vague  pur- 
pose. Vain  as  herself,  he  was  able  to  swal- 
low doses  of  flattery  too  direct  to  be  alto- 
gether refined — red  -  blooded  compliments 


67 

which  knocked  sledge -hammer -wise  at  the 
door  of  his  affection.  She  therefore  felt 
quite  certain  of  her  game.  A  stormy  atmos- 
phere brooded  about  her  which  he  noticed 
immediately,  but  wisely  ignored.  "  Poor  lit- 
tle devil,"  he  thought,  "  I  wonder  if  it's  the 
husband  or  the  mantua- maker  this  time." 
She  threw  down  the  embroidery  she  was  fin- 
gering nervously — it  was  one  of  the  Doctor's 
disappointments  that  she  would  not  read — 
and  came  forward  to  meet  her  guest  with 
outstretched  hands. 

"  Where  have  you  been  ?"  she  asked.  "  It 
is  two  weeks  since  I  saw  you.  Two  vastly 
dull  weeks.  We  looked  for  you  in  church 
even,  hoping  you  might  have  renounced 
Tom  Paine.  You  know  a  body  always  finds 
you  in  the  most  unexpected  places." 

He  pressed  the  two  little  jewelled  hands 
he  held,  saying: 

"  Not  at  all,  my  dear  Madame.  Here  I 
am  in  the  very  place  where  you  of  all  peo- 
ple ought  to  know  I  would  turn  up  as  soon 
as  I  got  back  from  the  city.  I  came  this  af- 
ternoon, and  you  see  I  have  hurried  to  re- 


68 


mind  you  of  my  existence.  Yes,  I  will  take 
this  chair ;  I  can  see  you  better  from  here.  I 

have  been  up  to  P to  hear  the  great 

Mademoiselle  Garcia.  What  a  voice  !  You 
know  her  father  always  sings  with  her ; 
strange — is  it  not? — to  see  parent  and  child 
acting  together." 

"Yes,  strange  indeed,"  she  answered. 
"  But  is  she  pretty?  You  men  are  such  sly 
dogs  that  a  woman  might  sing  like  the  an- 
gels if  she  were  ugly,  and  she  could  only  gain 
your  sympathies  from  behind  a  screen." 

"  She  is  pretty,  very  pretty,"  he  returned. 
"But,  you  know,  I  have  been  beauty-struck 
by  fair  hair,  and  she  is  dark.  I  assure  you 
my  case  is  worse  than  being  blinded  by 
lightning,  so  far  as  that  Spanish  type  goes." 

She  laughed,  and  bade  him  not  be  silly. 

"  'Tis  true  all  the  same,  and,  moreover,  I 
have  the  weight  of  public  opinion  on  my 
side.  Who,  for  instance,  ever  heard  of  an 
angel  with  anything  but  yellow  locks?"  he 
continued. 

"  Caught,  caught !"  she  laughed.  "  You 
have  been  ungallant  at  last,  for  whoever 


69 

heard  of  a  black-eyed  angel  either.  And  see 
— my  eyes  are  as  black  as  a  sloe." 

"  My  dear  Madame,"  he  protested,  "  even 
St.  Peter  is  only  a  beatified  man,  after  all. 
Do  you  suppose  any  member  of  the  male 
sex  could  withstand  such  glances  as  yours? 
He  will  throw  both  gates  open  and  rig  tri- 
umphal arches  in  the  golden  streets  for  your 
reception,  I  warrant.  I  wonder  how  you 
could  forget  that  the  eyes  of  all  sailors' 
sweethearts  have  been  brown  since  the  days 
of  Black -eyed  Susan.  And  you  know  a 
woman  who  places  her  affections  on  ship- 
board must  needs  be  an  '  angel,'  in  honest 
truth." 

"  Oh,  you  army  men  always  have  your 
little  fling  at  the  navy,"  she  answered,  laugh- 
ing. "  But,  you  know,  I  have  a  cousin  on  the 
Reindeer,  and  so  have  heard  the  other  side 
too.  Sailors  say  a  regiment  leaves  more 
broken  hearts  behind  when  it  marches 
off  than  a  whole  fleet  does  as  it  sails 
away." 

"  Dear  lady,"  he  said,  sinking  his  voice. 
"  Since  you  champion  the  navy  I  begin  to 


7Q 

be  dissatisfied  with  my  profession  for  the 
first  time." 

"  Oh,  la !"  she  exclaimed.  "  It  never  rains 
but  it  pours.  Here  have  I  been  for  a  solid 
week  without  a  compliment  big  enough  to 
make  a  school -girl  change  color,  and  now 
you  come  back  from  town  to  turn  my  head 
with  an  army  of  pretty  speeches." 

"  I  would  gladly  turn  it  my  direction  if  I 
could,"  he  whispered,  drawing  closer  to  her, 
and  at  the  same  moment  the  thought  flashed 
in  his  mind:  "  It's  the  Doctor  this  time;  I 
wonder  how  far  she  would  go  ?" 

But  Madame  was  new  at  the  game,  and 
drew  back  haughtily.  It  was  true  he  was 
good  company  enough,  and  a  fit  person  to 
rouse  her  husband's  jealousy,  but  for  all  that 
he  should  keep  his  distance,  she  would  see 
to  it. 

"  I  am  more  interested  in  what  you  saw 
in  town  than  in  discussing  my  own  poor 
charms,"  she  said,  coldly.  "  Be  kind  enough 
to  open  the  door  into  the  hall.  It  is  warm 
this  evening."  He  did  as  he  was  bid,  and 
seated  himself  at  a  more  respectful  distance, 


feeling  a  little  as  if  he  had  been  treated  to 
a  shower-bath.  But  he  had  no  intention  of 
going,  for  all  that.  Therefore  he  plunged  into 
a  budget  of  news  about  the  people  they  both 
knew  in  the  city,  the  new, fashions  he  had 
seen  on  the  streets,  the  last  novel,  some  fresh 
songs  he  had  brought,  and  how  people  were 
laughing  at  the  story  of  old  Johnston's  quar- 
rels with  his  young  wife.  He  told  her  how 
Jim  Jones  had  married  Polly  Smith,  how  this 
one  was  dead,  that  other  impoverished.  In 
a  word,  all  the  chit-chat  about  her  former 
friends,  from  whom  her  country  life  and  the 
high  rate  of  postage  cut  her  off.  It  was 
nectar  to  her  thirsty  soul,  and,  after  long 
weeks  of  silence,  she  drank  it  in  with  the 
provincial  delight  which  belongs  to  a  city 
dame  exiled  from  her  old  haunts.  "  Now 
here  is  a  man  with  his  wits  about  him. 
Gordon  came  back  from  town  with  his  finger 
in  his  mouth,"  she  thought,  angrily,  "  like  a 
yokel  from  a  country  fair." 

She  did  not  know  how  time  flew,  for  under 
all  his  chatter  there  lay  an  exhilarating  sense 
of  his  admiration,  too  delicate  to  be  defined, 


72 

but  which  assured  her  that  she  was  succeed- 
ing in  her  plan  of  conquest.  She  felt  that  the 
magic  of  her  beauty  was  working  upon  this 
man  of  the  world,  who,  being  of  her  own 
kind,  breathed  the  same  moral  atmosphere 
in  which  she  lived,  a  man  whom  she  could 
understand,  and  with  whom  she  therefore  felt 
at  home.  The  knowledge  of  it  filled  all  the 
sore  places  of  her  vanity  and  made  them 
whole. 

When  the  Captain  took  his  leave,  he  too 
was  elated  by  a  sense  of  conquest,  little  less 
agreeable  than  her  own.  And  as  he  rode 
along  whistling  through  the  summer  night 
he  smiled  to,  himself  over  the  anticipated 
pleasures  of  this  budding  flirtation. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  next  day  they  rode  a  long  way  to- 
gether into  the  green  fields  and  the  leafy 
wood  beyond.  He  told  her  stories  of  the 
Indian  wars  and  of  that  great  fight  at  New 
Orleans  where,  boy  as  he  was,  he  had  ridden 
up  to  an  English  battery  to  reconnoitre  and 
been  cheered  by  the  very  enemy  for  his 
daring.  There  was  nothing  she  loved  like 
physical  bravery,  and  his  tales  of  wild  ad- 
venture made  her  eyes  sparkle  and  her 
cheeks  burn  with  an  incense  of  admiration 
which  was  sweet  in  the  Captain's  nostrils. 
When  she  returned  home  late  for  supper 
that  night — the  Doctor  hated  irregular  meals 
— she  walked  into  the  dining-room  in  no  very 
submissive  mood.  She  felt  an  exhilarating 
sense  of  conquest  and  defiance.  What  was 
the  opinion  of  this  sober-sided  man  compared 
with  the  adulation  of  such  a  Mars  as  the  Cap- 


74 

tain?  Her  mind  was  full  of  the  blare  and 
dash  of  Read's  war  stories,  and  the  quiet  hero- 
ism of  a  life  voluntarily  subjected  to  daily 
contagion  was  completely  lost  upon  her. 
The  Doctor  opened  doors,  set  chairs  for  her, 
and  picked  up  her  handkerchief  when  she 
dropped  it ;  but  except  for  such  necessary 
interchanges  of  speech  as  a  divided  pocket- 
book  and  a  regard  for  the  servants'  opinion 
compelled,  there  was  no  conversation  between 
them.  She  tried  once  or  twice  to  put  her- 
self on  a  more  amicable  footing,  but  her  hus- 
band met  her  with  a  wall  of  courteous  but 
decided  antagonism  which  only  added  fuel 
to  her  flirtation.  In  this  unhappy  condition 
they  passed  through  the  summer. 

About  this  time  Madame  remarked  a  little 
red  spot  appearing  on  Wickford's  face  ;  be- 
lieving it  only  a  pimple,  she  paid  no  attention 
to  it  at  first.  But  as  day  after  day  rolled  on 
and  the  angry  place  still  burned  on  his  cheek, 
it  impressed  itself  upon  her  more  vividly. 
Had  she  been  as  free  as  formerly  with  him, 
she  would  have  asked  about  his  health,  for 
he  ate  almost  nothing ;  his  eyes  looked  yel- 


75 

low  and  feverish,  set  in  dark  rims,  and  she 
knew  he  slept  badly  too.  Sometimes,  if  she 
were  restless  in  the  night,  she  could  see  the 
light  from  the  office  window  streaming  out 
across  the  garden.  At  first  his  vigils  gave 
her  pleasure,  for  she  fancied  her  scheme  was 
succeeding;  but  as  time  wore  on,  uneasiness 
took  possession  of  her.  He  made  no  sign  of 
relenting,  nor  did  that  storm  of  anger  arise 
which  she  relied  on  to  break  down  his  iron 
reserve  and  make  a  new  channel  where  their 
old  love  and  tenderness  might  flow  back  and 
irrigate  all  her  desolate  existence.  Could  he 
love  her  and  not  be  jealous?  To  her  mind 
this  was  an  impossible  anomaly ;  it  must  be, 
after  all,  the  thought  of  her  that  troubled 
him.  So  she  tossed  her  pretty  head  with  a 
reassuring  sense  of  supremacy,  and  went  her 
own  road,  taking  small  notice  of  the  town's 
whisperings — for  people  had  begun  to  whis- 
per, and  with  some  purpose,  too. 

The  truth  of  the  matter  was  that  the  Doc- 
tor at  this  time  was  wading  through  such 
deep  waters  that  he  was  blind  to  her  doings. 
The  shadow  of  his  life  had  fallen  upon  him  ; 


76 

the  dread  that  had  made  him  a  melancholy 
boy  and  a  work-loving  man  took  possession 
of  him  now.  He  threw  himself  heart  and 
soul  into  his  work  of  healing,  hoping  in  a 
dim  way  that,  for  the  worth  of  the  cures  he 
made,  he  might  buy  an  answer  to  his  prayer 
that  this  cup  pass  from  him.  He  could  not 
sleep  quietly,  for  his  dreams  were  haunt- 
ed with  the  indescribable  horrors  of  cancer 
cases,  where  as  yet  no  merciful  disinfect- 
ants and  anaesthetics  mitigated  the  disgust- 
ing character  of  the  disease.  Waking,  he 
was  pursued  by  the  remembrance  of  his  fa- 
ther's fearful  death,  which-  was  constantly 
before  his  mind's  eye.  Sometimes  he  would 
beat  his  hands  together  wildly  in  impotent 
protest  as  the  great  fear  shook  him,  then  he 
would  throw  himself  down  on  his  knees  pray- 
ing, until  great  beads  of  sweat  rolled  from 
his  face,  that  twitched  with  the  earnestness 
of  his  supplication.  The  shadow  dogged 
him  day  and  night. 

When  he  sat  looking  at  his  wife  a  thou- 
sand bitter  imaginations  tortured  him.  He 
believed  that  she  would  gladly  welcome  her 


77 

freedom — that  she  was  even  heartless  enough 
to  laugh  at  him  and  make  game  of  his  im- 
pending disfigurement.  So  there  grew  with- 
in him  a  fierce  sense  of  antagonism  towards 
her  that  steered  perilously  close  to  hatred. 
She,  who  was  never  ill,  would  be  impatient 
of  him  in  his  coming  loathsomeness  he  de- 
cided, remembering  her  derision  of  other  suf- 
erers.  He  was  goaded  by  the  recollection  of 
a  thousand  hard  things  she  had  said,  a  thou- 
sand slight  indications  of  thoughtlessness  to 
which  he  attached  undue  importance  in  the 
face  of  his  impending  calamity,  and  which 
hardened  his  resentment  against  her. 

At  first  he  smothered  his  own  recognition  of 
the  disease  with  a  persistency  born  of  despair. 
He  hoped  fatuously  that  he  might  be  mistak- 
en in  the  diagnosis  of  his  own  case,  promising 
himself,  day  after  day,  that  he  would  go  to  the 
city  shortly  and  consult  medical  authorities 
about  his  condition.  But  there  were  so  many 
ready  excuses  with  which  he  could  stave  off 
this  ordeal  that  the  weeks  wore  away  and  the 
months  followed  them  without  the  fateful 
journey  being  undertaken.  He  would  laugh 


78 

uneasily  when  the  sense  of  what  he  called  his 
cowardice  overwhelmed  him. 

"  Ah,  well !"  he  muttered,  in  extenuation 
of  his  own  dilatoriness.  "  Even  OEdipus 
thought  twice  before  he  questioned  the 
Sphinx.  Occasionally  she  ate  the  people, 
which  was  unpleasant  for  her  interlocutors." 

The  furious  ardor  with  which  Wickford 
pursued  his  calling  took  him  more  and  more 
from  home,  and  it  happened  thus  that,  al- 
though Captain  Read  was  constantly  in  and 
out  of  the  house,  they  rarely  met. 

Autumn  had  dressed  the  old  town  in  sober 
suits  of  brown,  laced  with  yellow  and  red ; 
there  was  a  sharp  tang  in  the  salt  sea  air 
that  sent  the  blood  dancing.  The  smell  of 
the  ripe  apples,  crushed  by  the  cider-presses, 
pervaded  the  orchards,  and  in  the  fields  the 
stacked  dried  corn  showed  the  unsuspected 
wealth  of  golden  pumpkins  that  grew  be- 
tween rows.  Out  in  the  woods  the  ferns 
had  grown  wan  and  pale,  and  the  fading 
leaves  began  to  carpet  the  dead  summer's 
undergrowth.  Day  after  day  the  officer  and 
the  lady  rode  away  from  the  tree-shaded 


79 

streets  to  the  silent  autumn  forests  where  sil- 
ver-gray oak-boles  upheld  canopies  of  brown 
velvet  leaves.  The  gum-trees  burned  like 
fire,  and  the  hickory  and  sassafras  gleamed 
golden  over  the  red  sumach  and  whortle- 
berry that  made  the  old  fields  seem  deluged 
with  the  blood  of  some  mighty  battle.  At 
times  the  long  lines  of  homing  ducks  would 
pass  them,  or  a  V  of  wild  geese  would  sweep 
over  their  heads,  crying  "  honk-honk  !" 

"  Look,"  he  said  one  day.  "  They  remind 
me  of  your  good  Aunt  Hannah  over  the 
way.  She  seemed  just  as  scandalized  as 
they  do  when  we  rode  off." 

My  lady  laughed  a  little  tremulously. 
"  Yes,  I  am  a  public  benefactor,"  she  said. 
"  What  would  they  do  for  talk  without  me  ? 
I  don't  suppose  you  know  that  these  esti- 
mable women  have  decided  me  unfit  to  as- 
sociate with  them." 

He  turned  on  her  in  blank  amazement. 
"  Poor  little  girl !"  he  exclaimed  ;  then  lean- 
ing over  and  patting  her  bridle  arm,  "  Would 
to  God  it  were  my  right  to  defend  you !" 
He  had  grown  really  fond  of  her  in  their 


8o 


close  intimacy — as  fond  as  a  man  of  his  class 
ever  is  of  a  woman  by  whom  he  believes 
himself  beloved.  He  did,  indeed,  possess 
the  animal  instinct  which  would  have  prompt- 
ed him  to  fight  for  a  creature  that  was  his 
own  ;  but  as  for  rendering  any  one  the  tribute 
of  perfect  continence,  it  was  as  far  beyond 
him  as  the  moon.  Like  the  great  Villiers, 
he  would  have  even  been  astonished  had 
such  a  thing  been  demanded  of  him.  The 
Doctor  was  perfectly  incomprehensible  to 
him  in  many  ways,  but  most  in  this,  that, 
although  it  was  evident  that  Wickford  was 
on  strained  relations  with  his  wife,  there  was 
no  other  woman  who  had  the  faintest  right 
to  boast  of  his  devotions.  She  turned  her 
head  away  to  hide  her  tremulous  lips.  It 
was  very,  very  lonely  at  Wickford  house,  and 
this  man,  who  asked  nothing  of  her  save  the 
cordial  welcome  so  easily  given,  who  in- 
dulged and  petted  her  as  though  she  were 
a  child,  flattered,  sang,  laughed,  and  rode 
a-horseback  with  her,  had  come  to  be  the  one 
cipher  representing  pleasure  in  the  barren 
sum  of  her  existence. 


8i 


"  Don't !"  she  said,  almost  rudely  shaking 
off  his  hand.  She  knew  she  must  keep  rein 
on  herself  or  she  would  cry.  She  touched 
her  horse  with  her  riding-whip  and  they 
started  forward,  galloping  briskly,  until  they 
fell  into  a  quieter  pace  as  they  threaded  the 
narrow  woodland  paths. 

"  Did  you  know  I  was  going  to  take  tea 
with  you  to-night  ?"  he  asked,  laughing.  "  I 
hope  you  remembered  it,  because  I  shall  be 
ravenous."  He  was  making  talk  to  save  her, 
and  she  recognized  it  gratefully. 

"  No,  I  did  not  remember,  for  the  best  of 
reasons — you  were  not  invited ;  but  come 
along,  and  take  what  O'Connor  elegantly  calls 
'  pot-luck.'  The  Doctor's  away,  but,  for  the 
matter  of  that,  I  might  as  well  be  ostracized 
for  a  sheep  as  a  lamb." 

"  Do  you  mean,"  he  answered,  gravely, 
"  that  I  am  the  cause  of  all  this  hubbub  ? 
Because,  my  dear  young  lady,  I  would  not 
for  the  world  get  you  into  trouble  with  your 
most  excellent  husband  or  his  very  respect- 
able kin.  I  don't  want  to  take  my  march- 
ing orders  if  I  can  help  myself,  for,  indeed, 


82 


though  you  won't  let  me  say  so,  it  will  be  a 
hard  day  for  me  when  you  turn  your  back 
on  me.  My  life  has  not  been  one  of  roses ; 
it's  the  thorns  I  ran  against  mostly,  and  un- 
til you  came  into  it  there  were  precious  few 
influences  to  help  me  keep  straight.  If  it 
worries  you,  little  woman,  say  so  ;  for  though 
the  time  I  may  have  with  you  will  probably 
be  short  now,  it  would  be  sorry  affection — I 
mean  friendliness — that  would  let  you  suffer 
for  my  salvation.  You  have  been  friend, 
comrade,  angel,  and — everything  since  I  have 
known  you.  There  never  was  so  good  a 
woman  that  was  so  beautiful,  or  so  beautiful 
a  woman  that  was  so  good."  He  had  played 
prodigal  at  too  many  women's  knees  not  to 
be  letter-perfect  in  his  part ;  he  really  did 
like  Madame,  and  his  big  blue  eyes  ended 
his  appeal  with  a  look  eloquent  of  much  that 
he  dared  not  express  as  yet  in  set  phrases. 

"What!  Going?"  she  said,  with  a  start. 
"  How  soon  ?" 

Her  pained  surprise  flattered  him.  "  I 
don't  know  exactly,"  he  returned.  "  There 
has  been  a  rumor  of  our  being  ordered  out 


83 

to  the  frontier;  our  time  for  idling  is  almost 
over.  The  Colonel  was  talking  about  it  at 
mess  to-day ;  it  will  be  the  hardest  break-up 
I  ever  made." 

She  was  playing  with  fire,  and  she  knew 
it ;  to  be  sure,  she  might  burn  her  fingers, 
but  a  sense  of  the  danger  gave  her  dull  life 
a  zest  it  had  lacked  heretofore.  Her  love  for 
Wickford,  though  of  an  inferior  variety,  was 
vital  enough  to  protect  her  from  any  illu- 
sion in  regard  to  her  present  state  of  feel- 
ing. She  knew  she  did  not  love  the  Cap- 
tain, yet  the  rectitude  that  would  have  sent 
her  beautiful  lover  to  the  right-about  was  be- 
yond her.  He  was  so  handsome,  she  argued, 
and  at  least  he  cared  for  her.  Who  else 
minded  where  she  went  or  what  she  did  ? 
Who  else  believed  her  good,  or  felt  elevated 
by  her  influence?  Not  even  that  cold,  si- 
lent man  she  called  husband,  who  packed 
himself  off  in  the  stage-coach  the  other 
morning  without  even  so  much  as  a  good- 
bye for  her.  There  was  a  good  deal  of  child- 
ish inconsequence  about  Madame  which  she 
had  not  laid  aside  with  her  short  petticoats, 


84 

and  just  at  present  flattered  vanity  on  one 
side,  and  wounded  pride  on  the  other,  lashed 
her  into  a  frame  of  mind  in  which  she  hated 
everybody  but  the  Captain,  and  would  not 
"  be  good  "  at  any  price.  What  was  the  use 
of  trying  to  win  back  a  love  she  had  com- 
pletely forfeited  ?  She  would  make  Wick- 
ford  pay  for  her  rejected  advances !  Be- 
cause she  knew  it  would  displease  him  for 
her  to  sup  alone  with  the  officer  she  was 
doubly  determined  to  do  so. 

"  What  do  I  care  for  a  pack  of  toothless 
old  gossips  ?"  she  broke  out.  "  You  are  my 
friend,  and  Heaven  knows  I  have  not  a 
plethora  of  that  commodity ;  my  husband 
does  not  trouble  himself  to  object.  Come 
along  then,  and  let  us  feast  together ;  I  be- 
lieve there  is  a  duck  and  some  salad,  and  we 
will  shock  Aunt  Hannah  a  little  more.  It 
may  act  as  a  tonic  for  her  blood,  instead  of 
those  nostrums  she  is  always  taking.  I  won- 
der if  I  told  you  how  she  dosed  me  with 
herb  tea  when  I  was  first  married  and  im- 
prudently acknowledged  to  a  cold. 

"There  were  bottles  and  bottles  of  all  sorts 


85 

of  decoctions  setting  along  the  window-ledge 
and  topping  the  mantel-piece  the  last  time  I 
was  there — vastly  ornamental  to  be  sure  !  I 
protest  it  smelt  so  like  Gordon's  stuffy  of- 
fice that  I  felt  at  home  for  the  first  time." 

He  laughed  good-naturedly,  and  answer- 
ed: "I  don't  half  blame  the  women  for 
hating  you,  you're  so  confoundedly  pretty, 
and  you  do  make  such  game  of  them." 

"  Please  don't  you,  too,  begin  to  lecture 
me,"  she  implored.  "Gordon  used  to,  once 
upon  a  time,  on  the  vanity  of  human  wishes, 
I  believe,  when  I  wanted  a  new  dress,  or  the 
respect  the  Spartans  showed  the  aged  if  I 
told  him  about  the  absurdities  of  those  old 
frumps.  Dear,  dear,  but  applied  classics 
were  tiresome  until  I  routed  out  my  school 
history  in  self-defence,  and  found  out  about 
those  disgusting  people.  The  next  time  he 
began,  '  My  dear,  I  regret  to  see  you  dis- 
play a  levity  in  your  conduct  towards  the 
aged.'  "  She  mimicked  the  Doctor's  meas- 
ured accents  to  the  life.  "  '  The  Spartans, 
who  were  the  nation  best  fitted  to  preserve 
their  autonomy  in  the  Peleponnesus — '  I 


86 


let  him  get  that  far,  and  I  made  up  my 
mind  I  would  not  be  bullied  by  the  old  im- 
postors any  longer." 

"  What  did  you  say  ?"  queried  the  other, 
bending  a  twig  out  of  the  way  of  her  broad 
plumed  hat. 

"  Thank  you  ;  what  did  I  say  ?  Why,  I 
told  him  that  I  had  more  than  my  fill  of 
reproaches  for  my  general  impiety,  and  if 
he  would  only  be  consistent  in  his  demands 
I  should  be  most  happy  to  amend  my  man- 
ners. He  naturally  stared  at  this,  so  I  ex- 
plained. He  was  half  worrying  the  life 
out  of  me  about  that  time  to  get  me  to 
visit  a  sort  of  child's  hospital  he  has  at  the 
edge  of  town,  full  of  all  sorts  of  deformed, 
ugly  little  creatures — it  makes  one  lose  one's 
appetite  to  think  about  them.  He  had  also 
been  expostulating  about  the  soup ;  it  was 
bad,  too — I  saw  to  that,"  she  added,  with  an 
upward  glance  and  a  ripple  of  laughter  at 
the  memory  of  her  stratagem.  "  Well,  to 
come  back  to  my  story,  I  asked  him  if  I  were 
wrong  in  supposing  that  it  was  the  Spar- 
tans who  exposed  unsightly  children  on  the 


87 

mountains.  '  Yes,'  he  answered,  bewildered. 
'  What  has  that  to  do  with  it?'  I  went  on  : 
The  Spartans  ate  precious  bad  food,  too ; 
they  went  a-hunting  slaves  when  the  game 
was  scarce,  and  told  lies  for  a  very  living. 
Now,  as  I  am  a  thorough-going  woman,  if  I 
were  to  follow  the  example  of  these  truly 
genteel  people  at  all,  I  insisted  I  should  do 
it  consistently.  He  must  therefore  stop 
tormenting  me  about  his  hospital,  which 
was  a  highly  immoral  institution  from  a 
Spartan  standpoint ;  he  must  give  up  com- 
plaining about  the  dinner ;  and,  I  said,  '  I 
will  trouble  you  to  leave  Thomas  alone  in 
future  when  I  send  him  with  a  message  that 
I  am  not  at  home.'  I  have  heard  nothing 
of  the  Spartans  since,"  she  concluded. 

They  laughed  together  over  the  Doctor's 
defeat,  the  Captain  as  merrily  as  a  man  may 
at  the  mishaps  of  a  supplanted  rival,  but  in 
Madame's  heart  there  arose  a  longing  for 
the  old  days.  Even  if  her  husband  scolded 
her,  they  "were  better,  infinitely  better,  than 
the  eternal  silence  that  crushed  her  like  a 
nightmare.  Oh,  he  should  say  something, 


he  should,  even  if  it  were  only  to  anathema- 
tize her!  She  was  one  of  those  coarse- 
fibred  women  who  revel  in  violent  emotions 
of  any  kind,  but  to  whom  silent  disapproval 
is  torture.  Had  the  Doctor  stormed  at  her 
it  would  not  have  disturbed  her  nearly  so 
much  as  did  his  studied  civility ;  quarrelling 
and  "  making  up  "  formed  part  of  her  ideal 
of  happiness. 

She  was  rather  silent  on  the  way  home, 
while  he  drifted  into  stories  of  hunting  ex- 
periences in  some  Western  post,  to  which 
she  answered  at  random.  Though  he  rec- 
ognized that  her  attention  was  not  with 
him,  he  talked  on  kindly  to  fill  in  the 
pauses,  imagining  that  the  news  of  his  near 
departure  was  the  cause  of  her  abstraction. 
A  gray  sea  fog  had  blown  up  while  they 
rode,  and  now  muffled  the  whole  country 
in  ghostly  indistinctness,  through  which 
the  waning  twilight  struggled  feebly.  A 
colony  of  swallows  were  holding  some  kind 
of  conclave  on  the  stone-wall  by  the  way- 
side. Every  now  and  then  one  or  another 
would  rise  a  few  feet  in  the  air,  and,  cir- 


cling  about  a  moment,  rejoin  his  fellows 
again. 

"  Look  at  them !"  said  the  Captain.  "  They 
are  as  uneasy  as  a  regiment  under  orders  to 
march.  They'll  be  going  soon." 

"  Ah  yes !"  she  answered.  "  It  is  a  bad 
presage ;  don't  talk  about  orders  or  march- 
ing, it  makes  me  nervous.  I  believe  there's 
a  storm  brewing  somewhere ;  as  Aunt  Han- 
nah says,  I  feel  it  in  my  bones." 

They  turned  into  the  lane  by  the  grave- 
yard. The  place  looked  more  desolate  than 
ever,  choked  with  its  withered  summer  weeds 
and  rank  grass  dripping  with  the  dampness. 
In  her  overwrought  state  the  gray  head-stones 
seemed  to  grin  at  her,  and  the  long  white 
shaft  over  old  Madame  Wickford  loomed  up 
like  a  shrouded  figure  in  the  mist.  Isabel 
shuddered,  and  pressed  on  to  the  garden  gate. 

"  Come  in  here,"  she  said ;  "  it's  too  late 
to  horrify  the  neighbors,  so  let's  give  up 
going  round  to  the  front  door.  We  will 
have  tea  just  as  we  are,  and  afterwards 
we  will  try  over  the  new  music  you  sent 
for.  Let  us  get  in  to  the  light ;  it's  eerie 


90 

out  here.  I  feel  like  something  was  going 
to  happen  to  me  to-night."  He  jumped 
from  his  horse,  and,  lifting  her  lightly,  set 
her  down  by  the  gate.  A  negro  hostler  led 
the  animals  away  as  Madame  and  the  Cap- 
tain crossed  the  garden.  The  calceolarias 
had  thriven  during  the  summer,  but  the  ear- 
lier frosts  had  made  a  sad  havoc  among 
them  ;  it  was  a  desolate  -  looking  place  on 
this  dull  evening. 

"  You  don't  know  it,"  she  said,  "  but  this 
garden  is  tragic  ground." 

"  How  do  you  mean  tragic  ?"  he  returned. 

"  Never  mind  now  ,  it's  a  long  story,"  re* 
turned  my  lady.  "And  you  are  to  be  as 
hungry  as  a  hunter,  remember." 

"  Well,"  he  laughed,  "  it's  the  plain  truth. 
I  would  appreciate  it  better  after  supper. 
'A  sad  tale's  doubly  saddened  when  it  is 
long,'  you  know." 

As  they  entered  the  dim-lit  hall  a  little 
figure  came  running  towards  my  lady,  eager- 
ly exclaiming,  "  Granma's  sick,  and  mother's 
gone.  So  I'se  come  to  take  tea  and  spend 
the  night,  please." 


"  Dear,  dear,"  said  Madame,  kissing  John- 
nie. "  I  am  vastly  popular  to-night,  to  be 
sure ;  you  are  my  second  uninvited  guest. 
But  you  are  very  welcome  all  the  same, 
little  man." 

The  Captain  groaned ;  he  and  Johnnie 
were  fast  friends,  but  there  was  such  a  case 
as  having  too  much  of  a  good  thing,  and  the 
child  was  a  very  good  thing,  indeed,  when 
he  was  replete  without  being  sleepy.  The 
two  grown  people  made  a  good  deal  of  the 
baby,  however,  for  he  came  in  the  nick  of 
time,  to  save  what  the  Captain  called  "  the  po- 
sition," and  Madame  "  the  situation."  John- 
nie ate  and  drank  four  times  as  much  as  was 
good  for  him,  and  revelled  in  preserves  and 
sweetmeats  to  his  heart's  content,  but  greatly 
to  the  detriment  of  his  little  stomach. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THERE  was  a  wood  fire  crackling  on  the 
hearth,  and  the  candles  were  all  lighted  when 
the  three  entered  the  sitting-room. 

"  I  can't  get  this  place  to  look  like  home," 
Isabel  said.  "  These  straight  -  backed  old 
chairs  always  seem  as  prim  and  uncomforta- 
ble as  children  with  their  company  manners 
on." 

"  I  ain't  uncomfoble,"  proclaimed  Johnnie 
from  the  Captain's  shoulder,  "  and  I  ain't 
prim  either." 

"  Of  course  not,  of  course  not ;  you're  the 
nicest  little  gentleman  that  ever  was,"  Ma- 
dame hastened  to  assure  him.  "  But  we 
are  going  to  play  music  now ;  don't  you 
think  Chloe  had  better  take  you  up  to 
by-by." 

"  I  don't  wa-a-a-nt  to  go  by-by,"  began 
the  boy,  with  a  suspicious  prolongation  of 


93 

his  vowels  that  presaged  a  howl.  "  Johnnie 
ain't  sleepy." 

"  Come,  come,  little  soldier,  don't  pipe 
your  eye !"  exclaimed  the  Captain,  hastily 
putting  the  child  down.  Both  the  grown 
people  had  some  experience  of  that  young 
gentleman's  staying  powers  when  he  once 
went  fairly  on  the  war-path. 

"  If  Johnnie  will  be  quiet  he  may  stay 
where  he  is,  then,"  said  Madame,  wisely  dis- 
creet in  the  face  of  danger.  The  child  set- 
tled himself  on  the  bear  rug  before  the  fire, 
and  began  to  amuse  himself  famously  with 
the  numerous  playthings  his  hostess  pro- 
vided, talking  merrily  to  himself  the  while. 
There  were  picture-books  full  of  beautiful 
ladies  with  high  foreheads  and  very  long 
necks;  there  was  the  silver  snuffer -tray  for 
a  wagon,  in  which  he  drove  the  glass  paper- 
weight around  the  hearth-rug.  He  had 
thoughts  of  demanding  the  late  dahlias 
blooming  in  a  vase  on  the  centre-table,  but 
luckily  his  intimate  friend  the  cat  appeared 
just  at  this  juncture,  and  he  forgot  about  it. 

In  the  meantime  Madame  threw  aside  her 


94 

broad  plumed  hat,  and,  gathering  up  the  am- 
ple skirts  of  her  riding-dress,  searched  here 
and  there  for  the  music  she  wanted. 

"  I  must  have  left  it  up-stairs,"  she  said. 
"  Wait  a  minute  while  I  run  and  see." 

The  soldier,  Johnnie,  and  the  cat  were  all 
in  a  high  romp  when  she  returned ;  between 
them  they  were  making  such  a  noise  that  it 
completely  drowned  the  sound  of  her  fum- 
bling at  the  door  with  overburdened  hand. 
At  last  she  got  it  open,  but  in  the  effort  her 
long  skirt  dropped  from  her  arm  and  tripped 
her  when  she  tried  to  move  forward.  As 
she  stumbled,  Read  sprang  forward  and 
caught  her  in  his  arms.  She  broke  away 
from  him  as  soon  as  she  could  regain  her 
footing,  exclaiming,  with  a  scarlet  face : 

"How  awkward  I  am,  to  be  sure!  But 
here's  the  music  ;  let  us  begin  at  once." 

The  Captain  bent  to  pick  up  something 
from  the  floor ;  his  pulses  throbbed  violently, 
and  a  thousand  thoughts  that  are  the  better 
for  imprisonment  knocked  tumultuously  at 
the  gates  of  expression. 

"  Wait  an  instant,"  he  said,  to  gain  time 


95 

for  self-command.  "  I  have  found  some  most 
attractive  metal ;  how  did  this  get  here  ?" 

"  Oh,  that,"  she  said,  indifferently,  glanc- 
ing over  her  shoulder.  "  It's  an  old  picture 
of  me  that  Gordon  doesn't  like ;  my  can- 
dle blew  out,  and  I  knocked  it  over  in  the 
dark.  So,  rather  than  keep  you  waiting 
while  I  set  things  to  rights,  I  brought  it 
along.  Come,  let's  try  the  music  now ;  see, 
here's  a  duet."  She  began  humming  as  she 
ran  over  the  notes.  He  laid  down  the  little 
gold  case,  and  joined  her  at  the  piano  as 
he  was  bid. 

"O'er  the  far  blue  mountain,  o'er  the  dark  sea- foam, 
Come,  thou  long-parted  one,  come  to  thy  home " — 

rang  the  'two  voices  through  the  house, 
flooding  the  rooms  with  profane  melody  un- 
der the  very  noses  of  the  sour-faced  pictures 
of  ministers  and  lawyers,  who  had  each  sat 
in  their  father's  place,  successively,  since  the 
Wickfords  began  to  be  a  great  family. 

The  little  miniature  which  she  had  dropped 
was  one  that  Isabel  ordered  for  her  husband 
in  his  courting  days.  Some  post -marital 


96 

comment  about  the  likeness  annoyed  her,  so 
she  had  taken  it  away  from  him,  and  set  it 
up  on  a  little  stand  among  the  essence-bot- 
tles and  brushes  that  littered  her  spindle- 
legged  dressing-table.  When  he  begged  it 
again  she  refused,  saying,  laughingly,  that 
she  wanted  a  standard  to  judge  her  age  by 
when  the  wrinkles  came. 

Song  followed  song,  sometimes  one  and 
then  the  other,  sometimes  the  two  voices 
married  in  perfect  concord.  They  were  thin, 
commonplace  tunes,  but  are  even  now  sweet 
with  the  perfume  of  past  years.  In  the  cup- 
board of  the  old  house  the  same  yellowed 
copies  of  music  from  which  they  sang  that 
night  lie  mouldering  quietly.  There  is 

"  From  the  white-blossomed  sloe  my  dear  Chloe  requested 
A  sprig  her  fair  breast  to  adorn," 

which  he  set  ringing  through  the  house  on 
the  tide  of  his  splendid  barytone.  There, 
too,  is 

"  'Twere  vain  to  tell  thee  all  I  feel," 

that  she  trilled  to  him,  and 


97 


' '  Quick  mount   thy   gay   and   gallant   steed,  my   soldier 
boy," 

its  cover  adorned  with  a  picture  of  an  im- 
possible horse,  with  legs  of  unequal  length, 
the  bridle  held  by  a  deformed  Greek  soldier 
in  a  semi-Turkish  uniform,  who  touches  the 
hand  of  a  lady  in  a  steeple  cap,  floating 
veil,  and  bloomer  costume.  She  is  supposed 
to  urge  him  to 

"  Mount,  the  foe  is  near — 

Greece  calls  thee  in  her  hour  of  need, 
And  who  but  thou  shouldst  hear  ?" 

One  feels  dread  forebodings  for  a  nation  de- 
fended by  such  a  solitary  trooper. 

Somehow  the  tinkling  old  tunes  reflect  the 
spirit  of  those  times  when  the  lives  of  men  and 
women  swung  between  the  two  poles  of  war's 
brutality  and  a  super-refined  sentimentalism 
which  seems  mawkish  to  their  more  prosaic 
grandchildren.  To  us  these  songs  are  only 
interesting  as  musical  curiosities,  over  which 
we  smile  indulgently ;  but  for  the  man  and 
woman  at  the  piano  they  were  the  living 
melodic  expression  of  their  generation,  and 


98 

in  the  shadow  of  their  coming  separation  the 
notes  throbbed  with  a  burden  of  sorrow,  of 
dreaded  loneliness,  and  a  weight  of  unspoken 
passion  that  wrought  them  both  to  the  high- 
est pitch  of  nervous  tension. 

The  little  boy  on  the  hearth-rug  had  gone 
to  sleep  long  before  Madame  shut  the  piano. 

"  I  suppose  I  had  better  have  him  carried 
up-stairs  now,"  she  said,  tentatively,  looking 
down  at  the  child's  figure,  relaxed  in  perfect 
repose.  "  See,  he  has  got  hold  of  my  minia- 
ture, too,  and  has  gone  to  sleep  with  it  in  his 
hand." 

"  I  would  let  well  enough  alone,  if  I  were 
you,"  returned  her  companion.  "  Listen. 
Who  can  be  knocking  at  this  .hour?  It's 
nearly  eleven  by  the  clock." 

The  clatter  of  the  brass  knocker  continued. 
"  Here,  let  me  go  to  the  door.  It  may  be 
some  one  who  wants  to  see  the  Doctor." 

A  sudden  apprehension  shook  her,  every 
overwrought  nerve  in  her  body  seemed  strain- 
ed to  listen ;  the  wind  had  risen  since  dark, 
and  was  moaning  in  the  chimney.  She  heard 
him  fumble  with  the  bolts ;  it  seemed  an 


99 

age  before  the  door  flew  open  with  a  crash, 
and  the  storm  rushed  in  whooping,  making 
the  candles  flicker  and  starting  the  smoulder- 
ing logs  into  a  blaze.  Some  one  was  talking 
to  the  Captain  in  the  hall ;  now  the  door 
closed,  and  she  heard  his  quick  step  coming 
back  alone.  The  presentiment  of  impending 
evil  that  had  oppressed  her  all  day  now  took 
the  form  of  anxiety  for  her  husband ;  her 
fear  grew  into  an  awful  certainty  of  misfort- 
une as  she  listened  for  the  Captain's  return. 
Could  Gordon  have  been  taken  ill  ?  Was 
there  an  accident  on  the  journey?  Could 
he  even  be  dead  ?  "  Oh,  God,"  she  prayed, 
dumbly,  "not  without  saying  good-bye — 
not  angry  with  me,  and  without  good-bye  !" 
She  stood  with  clasped  hands  waiting  her 
doom  as  Read  entered.  His  face  was  white 
and  set ;  he  walked  up  to  her  and  took  both 
her  hands.  "  It's  come,  Isabel,"  he  said,  sim- 
ply. Her  anxiety  lifted  her  out  of  the  level 
of  small  things,  and  she  hardly  noticed  the 
use  of  her  Christian  name. 

"  Not  dead  !     Oh,  for  Heaven's  sake,  say 
he  is  not  quite  dead  !"  she  implored. 


100 

"  Who's  not  dead  ?"  queried  the  mystified 
Captain.  "  Worry  has  turned  your  brain, 
child.  There  '11  be  many  a  poor  fellow  stiff 
and  stark  before  we  get  back ;  but  we're 
alive  enough  now,  all  of  us.  The  Indians 
are  out  on  the  war-path  again,  and  the  regi- 
ment's ordered  to  the  front." 

The  relief  from  the  horror  of  her  imagina- 
tion was  too  great  a  transition  for  her  over- 
strained nerves  ;  she  broke  out  into  an  hys- 
terical fit  of  weeping,  which  the  Captain 
totally  misunderstood. 

He  dropped  on  his  knees  beside  her,  and 
drew  her  suddenly  towards  him.  "  Ah,  be- 
loved !"  he  said,  "  don't  make  it  worse  for 
me ;  God  knows  it's  hard  enough  to  leave 
you  as  it  is." 

She  struggled  away  from  his  embrace, 
startled  from  the  total  absorption  in  her  own 
fears.  "  Worse  for  you  !"  she  exclaimed, 
springing  up  and  facing  him.  "  Worse  for 
you,  because  he  is  alive.  Ah,  why  should 
you  care  ?  It  is  I  who  ought  to  be  glad  if  he 
died — I,  whom  he  tortures,  who  love  him  in 
spite  of  it  all,  and  would  give  my  life,  drop  by 


101 


drop,  for  even  a  little  of  the  tenderness  I  did 
not  value  when  I  had  it.  Oh,  if  you  knew 
what  it  is  to  sit  face  to  face  with  the  corpse 
of  your  dead  happiness,  as  I  do  every  day 
and  all  day,  you  would  understand  what 
hell  is!" 

The  Captain  staggered  to  his  feet.  Here 
was  a  revelation  indeed.  He  had  always 
thought  of  Isabel  with  a  half-contemptuous 
tenderness,  as  of  a  pretty  woman  fallen  an 
easy  conquest  to  his  fascinations,  but  the  dis- 
covery of  her  absorbing  love  for  Wickford 
piqued  him.  "Why,  in  God's  name,"  he 
thought,  wrathfully,  "  had  she  the  bad  taste 
to  hanker  after  that  curmudgeon  of  a  doctor, 
who  didn't  even  possess  wit  enough  to  keep 
his  wife  out  of  harm's  way?"  He  realized 
perfectly  that  her  tragic  love  set  her  beyond 
his  reach,  and  respect  for  her  wifehood  made 
itself  heard  amid  the  crash  of  his  falling  illu- 
sions. This  respect,  which  had  been  absent 
before  in  his  feeling  for  her,  put  her  whole 
personality  in  a  new  light.  It  is  doubtful  if 
he  had  ever  been  so  genuinely  fond  of  Isabel 
as  he  was  at  this  moment  of  his  awakening. 


102 


She  looked  very  little  and  desolate,  huddled 
together  with  her  face  hidden  on  the  arm  of 
her  chair  and  her  slender  body  shaken  by 
sobs.  A  great  pity  for  her  surged  through 
him,  sweeping  away  the  lingering  remnants 
of  disappointed  vanity,  and  leaving  a  regret- 
ful, compassionate  friendship  in  its  place. 
If  he  could  have  stayed  now,  he  thought,  he 
could  have  been  so  much  to  her ;  he  might 
have  taken  her  part  in  brotherly  fashion. 
In  his  new-born  respect  there  was  contained 
an  instant  oblivion  of  his  past,  that  enabled 
him  to  imagine  himself  capable  of  friendship 
with  a  woman  unalloyed  by  any  baser  im- 
pulse. 

The  clock  ticked  stolidly  on,  the  moments 
were  flying,  the  night  was  already  old,  and 
there  were  many  things  to  be  done  before 
sunrise.  It  was  time  to  say  good-bye. 

"  Haven't  you  a  word  for  me  ?"  he  mur- 
mured, reproachfully,  as  he  bent  over  her. 
"  I  am  going  into  certain  danger,  perhaps  to 
my  death.  God  knows,  little  friend,  if  we 
will  ever  meet  again." 

She  caught  his  hand,  and  laid   her   wet 


103 

cheek  against  it.  "  Forgive  me,"  she  sobbed  ; 
"  I  had  no  right  to  burden  you  with  my 
griefs,  to-night  of  all  others.  You  have  been 
so  good  to  me,  though,  all  this  dreary  time. 
Ah,  why  must  I  give  you  up,  my  one  friend, 
my  one  friend !"  And  a  new  paroxysm  of 
weeping  shook  her.  He  knelt  down  beside 
her  again,  saying : 

"All  things  have  an  end,  Isabel  —  even 
this  dear  summer,  that  shall  ever  be  sweet 
with  the  memory  of  the  only  good  woman 
who  has  ever  called  me  friend.  Won't 
you  believe  me,  dear,  and  kiss  me  good-bye, 
just  as  you  might  if  I  were  dying?  Only 
once,"  he  pleaded ;  "  this  once  for  good- 
bye." 

She  lifted  her  head  and  stared  into  his 
face  with  terrified,  questioning  eyes.  In  his 
calm,  clear  gaze  there  was  no  vestige  of  pas- 
sion, only  the  kindly  sorrow  at  parting  that 
his  words  betokened. 

"  I  will  not  touch  you  unless  you  say  so, 
dear,"  he  assured  her. 

"  I  cannot,  I  cannot,"  she  cried.  "  He 
would  never  understand  ;  I  could  never  tell 


104 

him.  Oh  !  my  friend,  anything  but  that — 
only  I  cannot  do  that." 

A  sudden  thought  took  possession  of  her ; 
she  rose  swiftly  and  passed  over  to  the  child 
before  the  fire.  He  had  awakened,  and  was 
sitting  up  regarding  the  man  and  woman 
with  sleepy  eyes. 

"  Johnnie,  give  me  the  picture,"  she  said, 
as  she  gently  disengaged  his  clasp  from  the 
tiny  case.  She  next  caught  up  a  pair  of 
scissors  that  lay  beside  her  tambour -work 
and  cut  off  one  of  her  bright  curls. 

"  Take  these,"  she  said,  holding  the  two 
keepsakes  towards  him,  "  and  remember  I 
shall  pray  for  your  safety,  day  and  night,  with 
all  my  heart.  God  bless  you,  and  now — 
good-bye,  good-bye."  The  tears  were 
streaming  down  her  beautiful  face  as  she 
stood  before  him.  .  The  Captain  received 
the  little  tokens  speechlessly.  He  had  not 
intended  to  say  anything  but  a  formal  fare- 
well. But  the  temptation  was  too  great ; 
the  habit  of  his  life  had  formed  no  barrier  to 
stem  the  tide  of  his  desire.  He  stooped  and 
kissed  her  hastily  where  she  stood.  Before 


she  could  recover  she  heard  the  great  door 
clang  behind  him  and  his  horse's  hoofs  beat- 
ing the  road  in  a  rapid  gallop. 

"  I  want  my  'ittle  picture,"  wailed  the  child 
on  the  hearth-rug.  "  You's  a  bad  girl  to  take 
it,  and  I  won't  love  you.  I  wa-a-ant  my  'ittle 
picture." 

As  Madame  stumbled  up-stairs,  bearing 
the  kicking,  crying  boy  in  her  arms,  she 
paused  on  the  landing  in  astonishment,  for  a 
long  finger  of  light  pierced  the  heart-shaped 
openings  in  the  office  shutters.  Fatigue  and 
sorrow  clogged  her  mind,  and  she  only  won- 
dered, in  a  dull,  befogged  fashion,  how  the 
Doctor  had  managed  his  arrival  so  quietly. 


CHAPTER   IX 

WlCKFORD  returned  from  the  city  bear- 
ing his  death-sentence  with  him ;  he  had 
heard  the  worst,  and  the  worst  had  exceeded 
even  his  expectations.  Indeed,  although  he 
thought  he  was  fully  nerved  to  meet  what- 
ever doom  awaited  him,  the  assurance  of 
such  speedy  disfigurement  had  broken  down 
the  guards  of  his  fortitude,  leaving  him  a 
prey  to  the  purely  animal  longing  for  sym- 
pathetic companionship.  He  would  have 
given  the  world  if  there  had  been  any  one 
to  whom  he  had  the  right  to  carry  this  in- 
tolerable burden  of  sorrow,  with  the  assur- 
ance that  he  should  find  consolation  and 
comfort.  He  felt  doubly  cut  off  from  hu- 
manity by  the  loneliness  which  oppressed 
him  and  added  to  the  misfortune  that  would 
shortly  make  him  a  sickening  horror  to  his 
fellow-men.  In  his  supreme  distress  he  even 


107 

went  so  far  as  to  form  some  project  of  throw- 
ing himself  upon  his  wife's  mercy.  But  the 
memory  of  the  unfailing  ridicule  and  disgust 
with  which  she  contemplated  all  traces  of 
bodily  deformity  made  him  pause.  Yet  he 
had,  at  last,  decided  to  see  her  and  tell  her 
the  full  extent  of  his  misfortunes— informa- 
tion which  he  judged  it  her  right  to  possess ; 
he  would  then  be  guided  in  his  subse- 
quent conduct  by  the  manner  in  which  she 
received  the  very  bad  news  he  brought. 

There  were  only  two  inside  passengers  in 
the  coach  that  night — himself  and  a  thin,  in- 
ferior-looking man,  burdened  with  an  appall- 
ing number  of  bundles,  that  caused  him 
great  uneasiness  as  the  coach  rattled  and 
bumped  along  the  road.  A  sea  fog  in- 
gulfed the  surrounding  country.  The  win- 
dow-glasses dripped  with  moisture,  until  a 
great  wind  sprang  up  rolling  the  mist  aside 
like  a  curtain.  Wickford  cleared  the  pane 
with  his  handkerchief,  and  looked  out  at 
the  wrack  of  the  coming  storm  blown  across 
the  face  of  a  watery  moon.  The  trees 
"  stretched  bare,  protesting  arms,"  which  the 


io8 


tempest  whipped  in  its  anger,  tearing  from 
them  the  few  dead  leaves  they  could  still 
boast. 

"  It  looks  as  though  we  were  in  for  a  wild 
night,  stranger,"  said  the  little,  weazened- 
faced  man  beside  him. 

"  Like  enough,"  said  the  Doctor,  folding 
his  arms  and  drawing  up  the  cloak  round 
his  face. 

"  Be  you  going  far  from  here  ?"  the  little 
man  continued.  "  I  won't  get  to  my  stop- 
ping-place till  to-morrow  noon." 

"  I  get  out  at  the  next  change  of  horses," 
Wickford  answered  shortly,  and  fell  silent 
again. 

"  Excuse  me,  stranger,  but  how  did  you 
come  by  that  sore  on  your  face?"  the  other 
persisted.  "  My  wife  she  had  one  just  like 
it,  and  it  killed  her  a  year  come  Christmas. 
She  was  a  fine-looking  woman  when  I  mar- 
ried her ;  but  before  she  died — Lord  !  her 
jaw  was  clean  eat  off,  and  her  nose — " 

Wickford  glared  at  his  neighbor  until  the 
very  dimness  seemed  luminous  with  his 
anger.  "  Who  permitted  you  the  imperti- 


109 

nence  of  putting  personal  questions  to  me?" 
he  thundered.  "  Be  silent,  or  I  will  wring 
your  miserable  little  neck." 

The  little  man  shrank  away  to  the  far  cor- 
ner of  the  coach,  flattening  himself  against 
the  opposite  side  of  the  seat,  for  he  felt  se- 
cretly assured  that  he  was  shut  up  with 
either  a  cutthroat  or  a  dangerous  lunatic. 
Therefore  he  concentrated  his  mind  upon 
keeping  still  as  a  rat  until  help  should  be  at 
hand. 

They  bumped  and  rattled  on  through  the 
night,  and  in  the  silence  within  the  vehicle 
Wickford  could  hear  the  driver  calling  to 
his  horses  and  cracking  his  long  whip  now 
and  then  to  urge  them  to  renewed  exertion. 
The  sounds  and  sights  around  him  partook 
of  the  unreality  of  a  dream,  compared  with 
the  sharp  sorrow  that  was  gnawing  his  heart. 
Sometimes  he  wondered  if  he  would  not 
awake  and  find  himself  in  his  own  carved 
four-poster;  the  terror  of  his  situation  was 
too  stupendous ;  even  this  little  human 
weasel  remarked  his  disfigurement  already. 
"  Oh !"  he  thought,  "  if  I  only  had  the  right  to 


no 

die — if  I  could  only  kill  myself  with  a  clear 
conscience!"  He  revolved  in  his  mind  the 
thousand  instances  of  self-destruction  that 
his  classic  education  had  taught  him  to  re- 
spect, and  remembered  with  a  wan  smile 
how  he  had  admired  Seneca  for  heroically 
playing  with  the  ebb  of  his  existence.  To 
die  now  seemed  so  simple  a  thing  in  com- 
parison with  the  duty  of  living,  which  his  in- 
grained religious  prejudice  thrust  upon  him. 
At  last,  with  one  supreme  jolt,  the  stage 
drew  up  at  the  door  of  an  old  inn ;  the  lan- 
terns flashed  back  and  forth  as  the  stable- 
boys  busied  themselves  about  the  steaming 
horses.  He  heard  the  men  calling  to  each 
other,  and  the  driver's  half-laughing  curses 
on  their  tardiness.  Why  should  he  wait  to 
be  driven  the  few  steps  to  his  own  door? 
He  decided  he  would  walk  home  and  send 
down  for  his  traps  in  the  morning.  The  still 
watches  of  the  darkness,  he  hoped,  might  help 
him  to  face  his  sorrow  quietly  and  become 
acquainted,  in  a  measure,  with  the  aspect  of 
his  own  horrid  fate.  He  opened  the  stage- 
door  and  disappeared  into  the  night. 


Ill 

No  sooner  was  the  coast  clear  than  the  lit- 
tle, thin  man  burst  out  of  his  castle  of  bundles 
and  stumbled  down  the  coach-steps  with  shak- 
ing knees.  "Where's  the  landlord?"  he  cried. 
"  Show  me  the  landlord."  Mine  host  hurried 
up.  "  For  God's  sake,  give  me  a  drink  quick!" 
stammered  the  little  fellow,  his  teeth  chat- 
tering with  fright.  "  I  have  been  shut  up 
with  a  lunatic  all  the  way  from  K ." 

There  was  a  great  deal  of  bustling  about, 
and  the  little  man  was  at  last  wrapped  in  a 
huge  quilt  by  the  tap-room  fire,  with  a  stiff 
tumbler  of  hot  toddy  in  his  shaking  hand. 
The  broad-shouldered  driver  came  in  to 
warm  himself  and  hear  the  latest  particulars 
of  his  passenger's  woes. 

"  What's  the  matter  with  that  fellow  ?"  he 
asked,  as  he  strode  into  the  circle  of  fire- 
light. "  There  warn't  no  crazy  people  in  the 
coach  at  all.  Him  and  Doc.  Wickford  was 
the  only  passengers  inside.  I  reckon  he 
won't  pretend  the  Doctor's  crazy." 

The  liquor  and  light  had  revived  the  spir- 
its of  the  man  with  the  bundles.  "  What 
ails  him,  then,  if  he  ain't  cracked?"  he  de- 


112 

manded  in  a  shrill  voice.  "  I  was  passin'  the 
compliments  of  the  day  with  him,  and  I  sez, 
sez  I,  'Stranger,  what  might  be  the  matter 
with  your  face  ?'  Then  I  told  him  about  my 
old  woman,  how  she  died  of  cancer,  just  as 
polite  as  could  be.  I  tell  you,  sir,  he  turned 
on  me  like  a  rattler,  and  bid  me  hold  my 
tongue,  a-threatening  to  kill  me  if  I  opened 
my  mouth  again." 

"  Humph,"  ruminated  mine  host.  "  His 
father  died  that  way,  and  his  grandmother, 
too.  Maybe  that's  how  he  come  not  to  like 
hearing  about  them  diseases." 

"  Well,"  returned  the  little  fellow,  in  whom 
the  toddy  began  to  breed  false  courage,  "it 
may  be  all  very  fine,  but  it  ain't  to  be  ex- 
pected that  every  passenger  in  a  stage-coach 
is  up  in  his  family  history.  I'll  go  as  far  as 
anybody  to  keep  up  the  conversation,  if 
agreeable,  but  if  not — well—  '  And  he  threw 
out  his  hands  with  an  expressive  gesture  of 
helplessness.  The  horses  were  in  now,  and 
the  travellers  resumed  their  places.  The 
whip  cracked  and  the  coach  lumbered  off  on 
its  night  journey. 


U3 

Wickford  entered  the  garden  by  the  wicket 
in  the  hedge,  so  no  notice  might  be  given  of 
his  coming.  He  was  unstrung  and  totally 
unfit  to  meet  his  wife  at  the  moment ;  he 
labored  under  the  oppressive  aloofness  be- 
gotten by  sorrow,  which  endows  even  the 
most  familiar  objects  with  a  strangeness  bor- 
rowed from  the  new  relation  that  we  thence- 
forth bear  to  our  dead  selves.  The  old  land- 
marks seemed  to  be  obliterated  by  the  tor- 
rent of  his  anguish,  and  he  felt  no  more  of 
the  balm  he  anticipated  from  a  sense  of 
home-coming  than  he  might  have  experi- 
enced in  entering  any  way-side  tavern.  His 
disease  created  a  spiritual  alienation  from  all 
things,  and  in  his  heart,  like  the  Jewish  lep- 
ers, he  cried  out  perpetually,  "  Unclean  !  un- 
clean !"  proclaiming  his  eternal  separation 
from  humanity.  He  saw  the  light  and  heard 
the  bursts  of  music  swelling  out  from  the 
drawing-room,  and  vainly  tried  to  smother 
an  unreasonable  sense  of  resentment  towards 
Isabel  because  she  was  enjoying  herself  so 
thoroughly,  while  he  shuddered  under  the 
lash  of  his  fate  out  here  in  the  cold.  No 


114 

doubt  she  had  guests  ;  he  decided  he  would 
not  disturb  her  then ;  it  would  be  time 
enough  to  thrust  his  sinister  presence  upon 
her  when  they  were  gone. 

Everything  in  his  office  and  the  adjoining 
room  was  just  as  he  left  it,  with  a  fire  laid 
against  his  coming.  He  soon  kindled  a  blaze 
upon  the  hearth  and  threw  himself  into  his 
high-backed  chair,  where,  in  the  deep  silence, 
broken  only  by  the  howling  of  the  wind  and 
the  distant  booming  of  the  surf,  he  deter- 
mined to  fight  out  his  great  fight  alone,  and 
win  such  quietness,  born  of  desperation,  as 
was  to  be  his  spiritual  meat  and  drink  until 
he  died.  In  the  tense  agony  he  endured 
he  took  no  note  of  time ;  all  the  forces  of 
his  nature  waged  war  within  the  narrow 
confines  of  his  heart,  and  their  storming  was 
mightier  than  the  rage  of  the  winds  without. 
The  temptation  to  self-destruction  surged 
over  him  from  time  to  time,  and  his  belief 
in  a  personal  devil  made  him  feel  almost  as 
if  he  could  see  the  dim  spectre  clutching  at 
his  laboring  soul.  There  was  a  supreme 
moral  courage  in  the  man  that  sustained 


"5 

him  in  the  midst  of  this  spiritual  upheaval, 
and  at  last  the  silent  dignity  of  resignation 
began  to  settle  upon  him.  He  would  live — 
yes,  and  carry  on  his  work,  too — until  the 
end,  nor  should  any  man  see  him  in  the  last 
stage  of  his  fearful  malady;  his  plan  was 
fixed.  Now  he  would  go  and  say  good-bye 
to  that  sweet  temple  of  all  his  ruined  hopes. 
He  would  look  on  her  for  the  last  time  face 
to  face ;  he  would  see  the  sheen  of  her  hair, 
the  rosy  flush  of  her  skin  once  more,  for 
from  the  morrow  all  things  would  only  come 
dimly  to  him  seen  through  the  fold  of  a 
black  veil.  The  fire  burned  brightly,  but 
he  lit  a  candle.  Who  knew  when  he  would 
come  back?  Perhaps  she  would  meet  him 
with  tenderness ;  perhaps,  after  all,  the  dif- 
ference between  them  might  be  bridged. 
There  were  all  sorts  of  half-fledged  thoughts 
nestling  in  his  heart  as  he  strode  out  into 
the  night ;  the  music  was  silent,  so  her  guests 
must  be  gone,  yet  there  was  still  light  burn- 
ing in  the  drawing-room.  However,  he  would 
look  in  before  he  intruded  upon  her  merry- 
making. Thus  thinking  he  drew  close  to 


the  window,  his  footfalls  silent  on  the  car- 
pet of  damp,  dead  leaves.  The  picture  in 
the  cheerful,  warmly-lighted  room  seemed 
ever  afterwards  etched  into  his  brain  as  by 
lightning.  In  a  flash  he  saw  her  cut  the 
curl,  he  saw  the  Captain  take  it  with  some- 
thing else  that  glittered,  he  saw  the  kiss,  and 
the  soldier's  hurried  departure.  Then,  with 
an  inarticulate  cry  of  rage,  like  a  tiger's  snarl, 
he  rushed  madly  through  the  garden  tow- 
ards the  street ;  but  it  was  too  late,  he 
could  discern  only  the  rapidly  vanishing 
figure  of  horse  and  rider  as  they  galloped 
through  the  night. 

In  his  blind  fury  he  ran  forward,  yelling  to 
stop  them,  but  the  wind  drove  his  voice 
back  in  his  teeth,  and  clutched  his  garments 
as  if  to  hinder  his  mad  race  after  vengeance. 
Bare-headed  and  panting,  he  struggled  on 
until  in  his  wild  career  he  caught  his  foot 
in  a  protruding  root  and  fell  heavily  to  the 
ground,  striking  his  head. 

He  never  knew  how  long  he  lay  there,  but 
when  semi  -  consciousness  returned  to  him 
he  staggered  up,  and  with  shaking  limbs  re- 


traced  his  steps.  The  whole  night  seemed 
full  of  demons  to  his  bewildered  senses — 
devils  who  howled  and  laughed  in  his  ears, 
and  blazoned  his  shame  on  the  very  house- 
tops. He  was  obliged  to  sit  down  and  rest 
at  times,  but  after  a  while  he  found  himself 
at  his  own  door. 

All  the  candles  were  snuffed  out,  the  great 
lower  rooms  lay  in  utter  darkness  save  for 
an  occasional  flicker  of  the  smouldering  logs 
in  the  drawing-room.  There  was  light  up- 
stairs in  Madame's  apartment,  though.  That 
room  he  thought  of,  even  in  his  present  half- 
crazed  condition,  with  a  great  heart-throb. 
It  was  the  nest  he  had  prepared  for  her  with 
so  much  loving  care ;  the  chamber  whose  . 
threshold  he  had  not  crossed  since  that  day, 
in  midsummer,  when  his  respect  for  his  wife 
suffered  an  untimely  death. 

Madame  was  nearly  ready  for  the  night ; 
she  had  sent  her  maid  away  and  was  gazing 
into  the  mirror  unseeingly,  with  the  full  tide 
of  her  hair  rippling  over  her  bare  shoulders 
and  hanging  on  either  side  of  her  tear- 
stained  face  in  curling  profusion.  The  sense 


of  utter  desolation  and  overwhelming  fatigue 
oppressed  her,  so  she  could  not  even  sum- 
mon the  energy  to  go  to  bed,  although 
every  nerve  in  her  body  ached  with  a  sep- 
arate pain  of  its  own.  She  heard  the  door 
open  behind  her. 

"  Go  to  bed,  Chloe,"  she  said,  listlessly. 
"  I  told  you  I  should  not  want  you  any 
more  unless  the  child  waked."  Hearing  no 
answer,  she  looked  up  into  the  mirror,  and 
there  above  her  was  reflected  her  husband's 
wild,  white  face,  the  purplish  spot  on  his 
cheek  glowing  with  sinister  distinctness,  and 
his  hair  disordered  and  clotted  with  blood. 
Screaming,  she  hid  her  head  in  her  arms, 
cowed  with  abject  terror  at  what  she  be- 
lieved to  be  an  apparition. 

"  Woman,  make  ready,  I  have  come  to  do 
the  vengeance  of  the  Lord,"  he  said  at  last, 
and  his  voice  sounded  toneless  and  unnatu- 
ral, like  that  of  a  sleep-walker.  "You  shall 
give  up  that  beauty  with  which  you  sought 
to  kill  men's  souls.  What  you  denied  me 
you  shall  give  no  man." 

The  heart  seemed  to  go  out  of  her,  and 


"9 

she  slipped  down  to  the  floor,  grovelling  in 
her  agony  of  fright.  "  Ah,  don't  kill  me  !" 
she  begged,  huddled  at  his  feet.  "  For  the 
love  of  Heaven,  don't  kill  me,  Gordon.  You 
will  be  so  sorry — so  sorry  afterwards."  She 
threw  her  white  arms  around  his  knees  in 
the  insistence  of  her  pleading,  and  the  glory 
of  her  gold  hair  lay  along  the  floor  where 
he  stood. 

He  dragged  himself  from  her  clasp. 
"Back!"  he  cried,  his  eyes  burning  with  de- 
lirium. "  Back,  woman  !  do  not  try  to  mesh 
me  in  your  toils  again.  I  saw  you  give  those 
tokens  to  your  lover,  and,  by  the  living  God, 
I  will  shear  you  of  your  attractions,  as  Sam- 
son should  have  shorn  Delilah,  then  would 
he  never  have  been  delivered  bound  to  his 
enemies." 

"Ah,  spare  me  just  this  once!"  she  plead- 
ed. "  I  will  go  away,  Gordon ;  only  don't 
kill  me.  Oh,  for  God's  sake,  don't  kill  me !" 
she  begged,  crawling  along  after  him  on  the 
floor. 

"  I  will  not  kill  you  now,"  he  muttered, 
still  in  the  same  dull,  cadenceless  voice. 


120 

"  Not  until  I  can  kill  him  too,  for  there  is 
no  justice  in  sending  one  soul  to  hell  with- 
out the  other  to  bear  it  company.  You 
shall  go  down  with  your  paramour  when 
your  time  comes,  but  it  is  not  yet ;  stand 
up,  stand  up,  I  say !  your  gold  hair  shall 
wreck  no  other  man's  soul." 

"  It  is  not  so,"  she  sobbed.  "  Oh,  Gordon, 
you  don't  believe  that  of  me  ?  You  can't 
believe  me  that  bad  ?"  But,  half  lifting  her, 
he  pushed  her  into  a  chair ;  then,  seizing 
the  scissors  that  lay  upon  the  dressing-table, 
he  cut  away  the  heavy  masses  of  hair  that 
hung  about  her.  She  could  hear  the  hiss 
of  the  scissors  as  they  reft  her  glory  from 
her,  but  she  had  neither  strength  nor  voice 
left  to  protest.  She  felt  now  that  her  life 
was  safe  for  the  present,  but  even  in  her  first 
relief  from  the  greater  terror  vanity  asserted 
itself  in  a  throbbing  sense  of  loss  as  he  strode 
to  the  chimney-place  and  thrust  the  glit- 
tering mass  into  the  heart  of  the  fire.  He 
rammed  it  down  with  his  heel,  and  in  a  mo- 
ment the  room  was  heavy  with  the  stifling 
odor  of  burning  hair.  She  watched  his  move- 


121 


ments  with  fascinated  eyes  as  he  disengaged 
a  long  gold  filament  that  had  caught  upon  his 
sleeve-button,  and  cast  that  in  too,  scrupu- 
lously examining  if  any  thread  remained 
about  his  person.  Isabel's  limbs  seemed  par- 
alyzed by  fear,  she  could  not  have  moved 
hand  or  foot  even  to  save  her  life. 

When  nothing  was  left  but  a  black  mass 
among  the  wood  ashes,  Wickford  passed  out, 
muttering: 

"  And  I  have  made  a  holocaust  unto  the 
Lord,  a  burnt-offering — "  and  his  voice  died 
away  as  he  descended  the  staircase.  Isabel 
tottered  to  the  door  and  bolted  it  before 
she  crawled  into  bed  and  covered  her  head 
with  the  blankets.  Thus  she  lay  shivering 
with  nervous  chills  until  towards  morning, 
when  she  dropped  at  last  into  a  leaden,  un- 
refreshing  sleep. 


CHAPTER  X 

MADAME  WICKFORD  awoke  with  a  start- 
led sense  of  some  one  banging  on  the 
door.  The  sun  was  streaming  into  the 
window,  but  her  mind  was  so  sodden  with 
yesterday's  fatigue  that  she  did  not  rec- 
ollect the  cause  of  the  depression  which 
settled  upon  her.  She  involuntarily  put  her 
hand  to  her  head,  and  started  up  with  a 
frightened  realization  of  all  the  events  of 
the  past  night.  In  the  mirror  she  saw  her 
white  face  surrounded  by  stiff,  ragged  tufts 
of  newly  cut  hair.  But  she  was  denied  even 
the  poor  consolation  of  time  in  which  to  col- 
lect herself,  for  the  door  resounded  with 
continued  knocks,  which  augmented  in  force 
as  she  listened. 

"  Mistiss,  mistiss,  please  come !"  wailed  a 
voice  in  the  passage.  "  Master  don't  know 
nobody." 

Isabel  hurriedly  slid  back  the  bolt.    "  Here, 


123 

help  me  to  dress,"  she  called  to  the  fright- 
ened maid. 

"  Lord,  Mis'  Isabel !  what's  the  matter  wid 
yo'  hair?"  exclaimed  the  negro,  paralyzed 
with  astonishment. 

"  Never  mind  that  now ;  get  me  my 
clothes,  and  don't  stand  mooning,"  returned 
Madame.  As  she  went  on  dressing  rapidly 
she  extracted  the  particulars  of  her  hus- 
band's sudden  seizure  from  the  negro,  whose 
unsatisfied  curiosity  about  her  mistress's 
shorn  locks  for  once  silenced  her  love  for 
the  horrible  in  all  its  details.  Madame 
learned  that  nothing  remarkable  had  oc- 
curred during  the  night.  O'Connor,  discov- 
ering the  office-door  open  at  an  unusual  hour 
in  the  morning,  and  fearing  robbery,  had  ex- 
amined the  place;  he  found  everything  un- 
disturbed until  he  penetrated  to  the  sleep- 
ing-room beyond,  where  the  body  of  the 
Doctor  lay  face  downward  along  the  floor. 
They  carried  him  to  his  bed,  but  he  did  not 
appear  to  know  any  one. 

"  Sometimes  he  do  speak,  mistess,  but  he 
jes'  talk  nonsense —  'bout  offerin'  a  whole  lo- 


124 

cust  to  the  Lord.  Dat  show  he  plumb 
out  of  his  head,  'cos  eve'ybody  knows  Goad 
'ain't  got  nothin'  to  do  wid  locustes,"  ob- 
served the  maid,  as  Madame  threw  a  scarf 
over  her  disfigured  hair  and  hurried  down 
the  stairway  to  her  husband. 

The  innate  love  of  excitement,  of  which 
a  servant's  life  is  so  barren,  had  brought 
the  entire  household  together.  They  were 
crowded  around  the  supine  figure,  talk- 
ing in  excited  voices,  and  too  wrought 
up  to  remember  even  the  respect  due 
Isabel  as  their  master's  wife.  Their  disre- 
gard stung  her  into  asserting  her  right  of 
command. 

"  Let  me  pass,"  she  demanded,  imperious- 
ly, as  she  pressed  through  them.  "  James, 
ride  for  Dr.  Stern ;  you  can  take  the  bay 
mare,  and  don't  spare  her.  William,  go 
over  to  Miss  Hannah,  and  ask  her  to  come 
immediately.  Tell  her  your  master  is  ill. 
The  rest  of  you  had  better  get  back  to 
work ;  I  will  look  after  the  Doctor." 

The  servants,  white  and  black,  took  their 
different  ways  reluctantly,  but  they  went, 


125 

nevertheless,  for  she  was  not  one  to  be  dis- 
obeyed with  impunity,  even  in  a  crisis. 

Madame  felt  that  at  any  cost  she  must 
retain  the  reins  of  governance.  All  alone 
with  the  man  she  loved  and  feared  at  once, 
she  sat  looking  at  his  flushed  face,  where  the 
red  spot  burned  hotly ;  her  mind  flew  back 
and  forth,  like  a  weaver's  shuttle,  among 
the  events  of  last  night.  In  a  moment 
Aunt  Hannah  would  be  here;  how  and 
what  should  she  tell  her — or  should  she  tell 
her  anything  at  all?  No  one  had  really  a 
right  to  know  the  particulars  of  their  quar- 
rel. She  wondered  now  at  the  impulse  of 
helplessness  that  had  prompted  her  to  send 
for  the  old  woman  at  first.  Certainly,  Isabel 
would  gladly  take  the  whole  nursing  upon 
herself ;  if  she  could  only  win  him  back 
to  her  what  sacrifice  would  seem  great,  what 
labor  hard?  But  when  the  events  of  last 
night  arose  in  her  mind,  the  memory  of  her 
recent  terror  made  her  shudder  at  being  left 
alone  with  him  in  his  delirium.  If  he  were 
indeed  mad,  as  she  believed,  what  was  to 
prevent  his  murdering  her  at  any  moment, 


126 


even  now  if  he  awakened  ?  Her  unstrung 
nerves  trembled  at  the  thought,  and  she 
turned  her  face  towards  the  door  with  an  in- 
stinctive effort  to  assure  her  possible  retreat. 

The  clouds  had  lifted  a  little,  and  every 
now  and  then  a  beam  of  watery  sunshine 
lighted  up  the  desolate  garden ;  the  chilly, 
damp  air  was  redolent  of  bruised,  dead  leaves 
— that  spicy  fragrance  that  only  belongs  to 
autumn.  She  shivered  with  cold,  yet  she 
feared  to  shut  herself  in  with  him,  for  as 
long  as  she  could  see  the  outside  world  there 
seemed  an  opening  for  her  out  of  this  cage 
of  despair  and  a  possibility  of  near  help  in 
time  of  need.  Aunt  Hannah  would  prob- 
ably come  by  the  passageway  connecting  the 
two  rooms  with  the  house.  What  an  inter- 
minable time  she  was  about  it !  thought  Ma- 
dame, face  to  face  with  dangers  whose  ex- 
tent she  could  not  divine.  Ah,  there  they 
were  at  last ! 

The  door  by  Wickford's  bed  opened  and 
admitted  the  messenger  accompanying  an 
old  woman  wrapped  in  an  Indian  shawl. 
Her  stiff,  muslin  cap,  covered  by  a  black 


127 

silk  handkerchief,  bordered  the  wrinkled 
face,  whose  kindly  expression  was  marred 
by  a  huge  pair  of  horn-rimmed  spectacles. 
Her  withered  hands,  worn  with  ministering 
to  the  unhappy,  were  incased  in  cotton  mitts, 
and  her  bright  blue  merino  dress  hung  around 
her  shrivelled  form  without  any  pretensions 
to  style  or  fit.  With  all  there  was  a  dig- 
nity and  a  suggestion  of  native  force  about 
the  plain,  unfashionable  figure  that  brought 
a  sense  of  relief,  and  assured  assistance  to 
Madame  as  she  sat  staring  in  dull  hopeless- 
ness. Aunt  Hannah  had  been  too  often  re- 
buffed to  make  any  advances  towards  friend- 
liness with  Isabel,  but  she  greeted  the  girl 
kindly  as  she  bent  over  her  nephew. 

"  Here,  William,"  she  called, "  you  get  that 
stock  off  your  master,  and  undress  him  as 
quick  as  you  can ;  he's  had  a  fall  somehow 
and  hurt  his  poor  head."  She  blew  the  fire 
into  a  blaze,  shut  the  door,  and  pulled  down 
a  window-blind  to  shield  her  patient's  eyes 
from  the  light. 

"  Can't  I  do  something?"  queried  Madame, 
humbly.  Why  had  she  not  thought  of  all 


128 


this  before  Aunt  Hannah  came,  she  won- 
dered. 

"  If  you  want  to  help,  Isabel,  you  better 
go  tell  them  to  heat  some  bricks  for  his  feet 
and  bring  me  a  little  warm  water." 

Madame  ran  on  her  message  like  a  bidable 
child,  and  returned  bringing  the  water  her- 
self. Although  there  had  been  plenty  of 
willing  hands  to  do  it,  she  felt  happier  ren- 
dering even  such  little  personal  service  as 
she  could,  than  sitting  idly  thinking.  She 
watched  Aunt  Hannah  bathing  his  face  and 
snipping  away  the  stiff,  clotted  locks  around 
the  wound. 

"  It  isn't  this  that's  the  matter  with  him. 
I've  seen  him  with  a  dozen  cracks  in  his 
head  worse  than  this  when  he  was  a  young- 
ster. I  wonder — "  The  old  woman  broke 
off,  looking  at  Madame  with  curious  eyes. 
Then  she  fell  to  examining  the  tiny  wound 
again.  The  sick  man  stirred  uneasily  once 
or  .  twice  and  opened  his  eyes,  moaning. 
Madame  gathered  hope  from  these  signs  of 
returning  life ;  perhaps,  after  all,  it  was  only 
a  fall ;  she  might  have  been  unreasonably 


I29 

anxious.  But  as  his  gaze  rested  upon  her 
the  pupils  of  his  eyes  contracted,  and  he  be- 
gan to  throw  himself  about  in  bed,  writhing 
his  long  body  like  a  serpent.  "  To  the  Phil- 
istines !"  he  muttered  ;  "  she  has  given  me 
bound  to  the  Philistines !  Ah,  they  will 
put  out  my  eyes !"  he  screamed.  "  They'll 
put  out  my  eyes !"  and  he  clung  to  his  old 
aunt  as  he  had  clung  to  her  in  the  helpless- 
ness of  childhood.  "  Send  her  away  !  oh,  send 
her  away !"  he  implored. 

"  You'd  better  go  out,  Isabel,"  the  old 
woman  urged.  "  It  '11  raise  his  fever  to  fret 
so.  Maybe  after  a  while  he'll  know  you  and 
come  round." 

"  He  knows  me  now,  Aunt  Hannah !"  re- 
turned the  girl,  bitterly.  "  He  knows  me ; 
that's  what's  the  matter."  So  saying,  she 
went  out  quietly,  but  the  shadow  on  her 
heart  lay  black  as  night. 

In  an  hour  or  two  the  physician  arrived, 
and,  emboldened  by  his  presence,  she  slipped 
into  the  sick-room  behind  him.  Wickford 
had  been  lying  comparatively  quiet,  moan- 
ing at  intervals,  but  as  soon  as  he  caught 


130 

sight  of  her  harassed  face  he  started  up, 
crying: 

"  She  has  come  back — look  how  she  glares 
at  me !  For  God's  sake,  send  her  away  be- 
fore she  puts  out  my  eyes !" 

"  Gordon,"  she  pleaded,  "  Heaven  knows  I 
would  lay  down  my  life  for  you.  Oh,  let  me 
stay !  let  me  take  care  of  you,  dear!" 

"  Look  at  her  head,"  he  muttered,  his  voice 
dropping  to  a  hoarse  croak.  "  There  are 
snakes  that  grow  there.  I  killed  them,  but 
they  will  come  again,  and  they  eat  men's 
hearts.  Ah,  they  are  biting  me  now  !"  he 
screamed,  as  he  twisted  himself  loose  from 
his  aunt's  arms. 

It  was  no  use ;  his  hatred  of  her  was 
stronger  than  disease.  The  physician  mo- 
tioned her  to  leave,  and  she  went  silently. 
He  had  brain -fever,  the  medical  man  told 
her  afterwards;  she  must  not  worry  about 
his  strange  delusions.  They  often  took  un- 
accountable dislikes  to  their  nearest  and 
dearest,  these  fevered  patients  ;  indeed,  it 
was  best  for  her  to  keep  out  of  the  way. 
Miss  Hannah  was  so  excellent  a  nurse  that 


she  need  fear  no  neglect.  Yes,  on  the  whole, 
it  was  better  not  to  excite  him ;  and,  in- 
deed, Madame  herself  looked  almost  as  bad 
as  the  patient.  "  The  sensitive  hearts  of 
women  were  so  susceptible."  So  the  physi- 
cian drove  away  in  his  gig  very  much 
pleased  with  his  own  tact ;  and  the  day 
wore  on  in  its  dreary  length  till  night 
came. 

It  was  tea-time ;  Aunt  Hannah  had  come 
out  of  the  sick-room  for  a  half-hour,  and 
Madame  Wickford  knew  that  now  the  ordeal 
was  to  begin,  yet  she  had  not  decided  what 
explanation  she  should  give  for  her  shorn 
locks ;  those  gray  eyes,  behind  their  horn- 
rimmed spectacles,  would  see  through  any 
flimsy  tale,  she  knew.  What  if  she  told  the 
truth  ?  No  one  would  believe  her,  no  one 
in  all  this  little  gossipy  place.  People  were 
moved  here  by  great  simple  motives,  and 
they  would  not  understand  how  her  soul 
was  swept  hither  and  yon  by  a  maze  of 
counter- currents.  She  decided,  at  last,  to 
throw  herself  on  the  old  woman's  mercy. 
At  the  worst  she  could  only  tell  the  town ; 


132 

and  as  the  town  must  know,  anyhow,  sooner 
or  later,  they  might  as  well  hear  the  truth. 
Isabel  threw  aside  the  lace  scarf  which  she 
had  wound  about  her  head,  and  waited  the 
coming  of  her  inquisitor.  There  was  Miss 
Wickford  turning  down  the  hall ;  she  would 
come  in  in  a  minute.  Madame  braced  her- 
self and  waited. 

"  Please,  Aunt  Hannah,  I  have  something 
to  say  to  you,"  she  called,  and  her  voice 
shook  in  spite  of  her.  The  old  lady  turned 
and  caught  sight  of  the  disfigured  head  shin- 
ing in  the  candle-light. 

"  Good  lack !"  she  exclaimed.  "  You  poor 
child,  what  have  you  done  with  your  pretty 
hair  ?"  This  one  drop  of  kindliness  broke 
down  the  gates  of  Madame's  last  defence 
and  loosed  the  sluices  of  her  tears.  She 
threw  herself  at  the  old  woman's  feet,  and, 
burying  her  face  in  the  merino  lap,  sobbed 
out  the  full  story  of  her  woe. 

"  I  know  I  am  bad,"  she  ended, "  but  oh, 
Aunt  Hannah,  I  am  not — not  what  he  thinks 
me !  I  never  loved  any  one  but  him,  and 
now  he  believes — oh,  I  can't  tell  you  what 


133 

he  believes;  it  chokes  me!"  she  cried,  wring- 
ing her  hands  above  her  head  in  impotent 
appeal  from  her  husband's  judgment. 

Deep  down  in  Miss  Hannah's  withered  old 
frame  there  dwelt  a  spirit  of  all-embracing 
motherhood,  which  spread  its  sheltering 
wings  over  whatever  unfortunate  creature 
came  a-begging  for  her  sympathy.  It  was 
hard  not  to  be  just  when  equity  lay  upon 
the  side  of  her  favorite  nephew,  but  the  girl 
sobbing  across  her  knees  was  infinitely  ap- 
pealing in  her  lonely  and  unfriended  condi- 
tion. It  was  only  a  moment  that  the  old  lady 
let  injured  feeling  and  a  sense  of  outraged 
propriety  stagnate  the  movement  of  her 
good  heart.  Then  she  gathered  the  girl  in 
her  arms  and  rocked  her  to  and  fro  sooth- 
ingly, patting  and  talking  to  her  as  if  she 
were  a  child. 

"  There,  there,  Aunt  Hannah's  pretty ! 
don't  cry  any  more,  don't  make  your  dear 
eyes  red.  When  Gordon's  well  I  will  make 
him  understand.  There,  there  !" 

Isabel  had  little  hope  of  the  result  of  any 
mediation  between  her  and  the  stern  man 


134 

whose  hate  dominated  even  the  delirium  of 
his  disease ;  but  the  sense  of  being  kindly 
treated  lay  warm  at  her  heart,  and  she  kissed 
the  old  woman  lovingly  when  Miss  Hannah 
returned  to  her  patient. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE  weary  weeks  dragged  themselves 
along ;  sometimes  the  news  was  that  Wick- 
ford  was  improved,  and  again  the  word 
would  come  that  he  hung  between  life  and 
death.  Then  his  wife  would  crouch  in  the 
passageway  outside  his  door,  listening  with 
indrawn  breath  to  his  incessant  moaning, 
dreading  lest  at  any  moment  it  cease  for- 
ever. Once  Aunt  Hannah  had  spoken  of 
her  fear  that  the  red  blotch  on  his  face 
was  the  herald  of  the  hereditary  distemper. 
The  old  woman's  acquaintance  with  disease 
in  many  forms  had  blunted  her  sensibilities 
to  some  extent,  and  she  would  have  been 
astonished  and  unhappy  had  she  known 
what  intolerable  pain  her  description  of  her 
brother's  death  gave  Isabel.  To  think  of 
Wickford  as  disfigured  was  monstrous — her 
beloved,  whose  physical  beauty  had  cap- 


136 

tivated  and  held  her,  in  spite  of  their  vital 
unlikeness.  She  would  not  believe  it ;  it 
would  be  even  better  that  he  go  now  than 
awaken  to  such  a  living  death  as  that,  she 
thought. 

Except  for  the  variations  of  the  sick- 
room, her  life  moved  with  silent  monotony. 
However,  there  was  one  event  which  tran- 
spired about  this  time  that  momentarily 
shook  her  out  of  the  voiceless  misery  that 
inwrapped  her;  one  day  a  package  arrived 
for  Isabel  containing  the  little  miniature, 
dented  and  broken,  and  a  blood-stained  curl. 
It  enclosed  a  letter,  too,  from  a  boy-lieutenant 
— one  of  her  old  acquaintances  in  the  regi- 
ment. He  told  the  story  of  a  surprise  by 
night — a  massacre  and  a  rescue — a  nameless 
battle,  replete  with  danger  and  devoid  of 
glory.  The  Captain's  body  was  recovered  ; 
he  spared  her  the  details  of  its  condition,  and, 
recognizing  her  face  in  the  miniature  over 
his  heart,  his  friend  sent  it  back  to  her, 
"  hoping  she  would  understand  that  a  sol- 
dier's honor  was  involved  in  the  inviolable 
secrecy  he  would  preserve."  The  boy  was 


137 

only  twenty  -  one,  and  secrets  still  smelt 
sweet  in  his  nostrils. 

Madame  cried  over  the  letter  and  felt 
sorry  for  a  time,  but  her  husband's  illness 
soon  swallowed  up  all  her  thoughts  again. 
Although  she  regretted  the  death  of  the  Cap- 
tain, yet,  as  he  had  been  the  cause  of  much 
of  her  present  unhappiness,  her  grief  was  of 
a  temperate  nature.  Hers  was  not  a  char- 
acter large  enough  to  harbor  more  than  one 
deep  sentiment  at  a  time ;  and  at  present 
her  anxiety  for  Wickford  absorbed  all  her 
small  store  of  sympathy. 

Gradually  he  crept  back  to  life,  reason 
illuminated  the  darkened  recesses  of  his 
disordered  brain,  and  he  began  to  gain  a 
little  strength.  But  as  yet  his  nurses  did 
not  dare  to  mention  Isabel  before  him. 
Madame  awaited  events  with  what  patience 
she  could  muster,  although  she  fully  appre- 
ciated her  mortifying  position. 

"  I  am  classed  among  the  disagreeable 
subjects  which  everybody  taboos  before 
the  sick,  like  undertakers  and  importunate 
duns,"  she  thought,  bitterly. 


138 

Wickford  recovered  slowly,  for  even  his 
youth  and  sober  life  were  small  assistance 
to  a  constitution  already  undermined  by  dis- 
ease and  broken  by  the  stress  of  the  emo- 
tional pressure  under  which  he  had  lived. 
The  autumn  went,  flecked  with  rain  and 
sunshine,  but  left  him  still  an  invalid.  It 
was  not  until  the  first  snows  whitened  the 
ground  that  Miss  Hannah  dared  her  initial 
tilt  for  her  new  prottgte. 

Wickford  was  sitting  by  the  window  look- 
ing out  at  the  purity  of  the  untrodden  snow 
and  enjoying  a  new  overwhelming  sense  of 
the  world's  beauty  which  comes  to  so  many 
of  us  when  we  crawl  back  exhausted  out  of 
the  Valley  of  the  Shadow.  Animal  con- 
tent with  his  surroundings  lapped  him 
about ;  he  was  glad  merely  to  eat  and  sleep 
and  wake  to  eat  again ;  everything  was  new 
and  good  to  his  freshly  recovered  percep- 
tions, and  he  shrank  from  facing  the  problems 
he  knew  awaited  him  like  hungry  wolves  on 
the  other  side  of  his  sick-room  door.  The 
very  contrast  between  what  lay  before  him 
and  his  present  state  enhanced  its  comfort. 


The  click  of  Aunt  Hannah's  knitting- 
needles  and  the  crackling  of  the  wood  fire 
was  all  that  broke  the  stillness;  even  the 
occasional  rumble  of  the  carts  or  the  beating 
of  a  horse's  feet  in  the  street  beyond  were 
muffled  by  the  white  blanket  that  covered 
everything.  He  heard  the  gate  click  and 
the  mingled  laughter  of  a  child  and  a  wom- 
an. Then  his  face  set,  for  Johnnie  crossed 
the  garden,  followed  by  Madame,  who  was 
wrapped  in  a  long  velvet  pelisse  bordered 
with  ermine;  a  great  beaver  bonnet  nodding 
with  lilac  plumes  framed  her  rosy  face,  all 
flushed  with  cold  and  exercise. 

"  So  the  wolves  will  not  wait  longer  on 
the  other  side  of  the  door,"  he  thought,  as 
the  old  bitter  contempt  and  anger  began  to 
glow  within  him.  He  had  grown  almost 
diseased  in  his  estimate  of  her,  and  although 
he  would  not  have  admitted  it,  she  was  the 
one  person  in  the  world  to  whom  he  was  in- 
capable of  either  justice  or  mercy.  She  had 
offended  him  in  his  weak  point :  she  had 
wounded  his  self-esteem,  and  he  could  not 
forgive  her.  He  felt  Aunt  Hannah's  eyes 


140 

upon  him.  "  Her  good  spirits  do  not  appear 
to  be  much  depleted,"  he  observed,  con- 
temptuously, as  the  radiant  figure  passed 
out  of  his  field  of  vision.  The  old  woman 
stuck  her  needles  into  her  work  and  seated 
herself  beside  him. 

"  I  have  got  something  I  want  to  talk  to 
you  about,"  she  began.  "  It's  no  use  my 
beating  round  the  bush ;  that  poor  child 
told  me  everything  concerning  your  quarrel 
that  night,  and,  although  I  can't  say  but 
what  it  looks  bad  from  your  standpoint,  I 
don't  believe  there  was  anything  in  it  that 
— that  a  foolish  girl  might  not  have  done  in 
a  pet." 

He  moved  impatiently  in  his  chair. 
"  There's  no  use  fussing,  Gordon,"  she  con- 
tinued. "  I'm  going  to  have  my  say,  and 
you  might  as  well  bear  it  quietly,  my  boy. 
I'm  not  pretending  I  was  pleased  at  your 
marriage  ;  the  very  name  of  her — Isabel,  for- 
sooth, instead  of  Mary  or  Jane  or  some- 
thing else  sensible— showed  her  mother  be- 
fore her  didn't  have  any  common-sense.  A 
girl  that's  named  that  way  is  bound  to  be 


flighty,  'as  the  sparks  fly  upward.'  I  didn't 
suit  her  nor  her  fine  friends  any  better 
than  they  suited  me,  and  so  I  told  her  at 
the  time." 

"  If  I  remember  rightly,  there  was,  indeed, 
not  much  love  lost,"  he  said,  with  a  grim 
reminiscent  smile. 

"  That's  neither  here  nor  there,  Gordon," 
the  old  woman  interposed  impatiently. 
"  What  I'm  coming  at  is  that  if  she  did 
carry  on  with  the  soldier,  you've  given  her 
a  fine  opportunity  to  exercise  her  Christian 
charity  in  your  behalf.  You  can't  justify 
yourself  in  my  eyes,  nor  your  own  when  you 
remember  what  Paul  says  about  the  cutting 
of  a  woman's  hair  ;  how  her  hair  is  her — " 

"  Will  you  kindly  inform  me  what  you 
are  talking  about?"  inquired  the  Doctor 
with  an  irritated  politeness.  "  I  have  so  far 
missed  the  point  of  your  remarks.  When  I 
was,  unfortunately,  in  love  with  the  present 
Madame  Wickford,  I  had  the  bad  taste  to 
request  a  curl  for  a  keepsake,  which  she 
promptly  refused.  Really,  my  dear  aunt,  I 
don't  think  you  can  find  any  sentence  in  the 


142 

whole  New  Testament  with  which  to  con- 
demn me  for  so  usual  a  demand — sentimen- 
tal, silly  if  you  please,  but  certainly  usual." 
He  turned  his  head  away,  and  looked  out  of 
the  window  as  if  to  dismiss  the  subject. 
But  Aunt  Hannah  was  not  to  be  silenced. 

"  Nonsense,  Gordon,"  she  returned.  "  The 
child  had  a  girl's  vanity  about  her  pretty 
curls ;  you  had  crushed  it  out  of  her  quite 
successfully  before  she  ever  heard  of  Cap- 
tain Read." 

"Aunt  Hannah,"  he  broke  in,  "what 
Isabel  chooses  to  tell  is  between  you  and 
her,  but  as  long  as  she  is  presented  as  my 
wife  I  cannot  let  even  you  connect  her  name 
with  any  man's." 

"  Well,  well,"  said  the  old  woman,  pettish- 
ly. "  If  you  wish  to  ride  your  high  horse,  of 
course  I  have  nothing  more  to  say ;  but,  as 
you  are  so  monstrous  particular,  what,  in  the 
name  of  common  sense,  induced  you  to  cut 
off  her  hair  and  make  her  character  common 
talk  about  town  ?" 

"  Good  God,  aunt !"  he  exclaimed,  with 
irritation,  "  where  did  you  hear  such  non- 


'43 

sense?  Ask  Isabel  herself — even  she  will 
tell  you  that  I  never  did  a  brutal  thing  to 
her  in  all  my  life.  We  don't  get  on,  that's 
the  truth ;  but  as  for  cutting  her  hair  off, 
you  ought  to  know  that  I  am  too  much  of  a 
gentleman  for  any  caper  like  that.  I  won- 
der you  believed  it.  When  I  am  out 
of  this  I'll  make  somebody  answer  to  me 
for  such  stories.  Who  is  your  author- 
ity?" 

"  Why,  Gordon,"  the  old  woman  replied, 
looking  him  full  in  the  eyes,  "  Isabel  told  me 
herself.  The  day  you  were  taken  ill  she 
showed  me  her  head  with  the  curls  all  hacked 
away,  and  said  you  did  it  the  night  before 
when  you  came  home." 

"She  lies!"  he  burst  out;  "you  know 
she — "  Then  he  controlled  himself  with  an 
effort,  and  continued  more  quietly:  "No,  if 
she  says  I  did  it,  let  us  accept  the  statement 
for  civility's  sake.  I  don't  know  what  her 
object  is,  but  if  my  wife  told  you  I  was  guilty 
of  this  unwarrantable  act,  pray  tell  her  from 
me  that —  No,  don't  tell  her  anything. 
Give  me  a  pencil  and  paper.  I  want  to  write 


144 

her  an  apology ;  it  is  more  polite,"  he  con- 
cluded, with  a  bitter  laugh. 

The  old  woman  laid  a  detaining  hand  on 
him.  "  My  boy,"  she  said,  "  you  were  very 
ill  that  night  and  greatly  excited  ;  maybe 
you  forget.  Think,  you  might  have  been 
out  of  your  head  when  you  did  it." 

He  was  still  suffering  from  the  irritability 
of  weakness,  and  this  startling  accusation, 
which  he  believed  to  be  one  of  Isabel's  in- 
ventions, stung  his  pride.  He  caught  the 
kind  old  hand  and  laid  it  across  his  eyes 
where  the  hot  tears  were  starting. 

"  Even  you,  dear  old  aunt !  even  you !  Ah, 
if  I  only  could  forget  what  passed  that  night ! 
Don't  let  us  talk  about  it ;  bring  me  my  port- 
folio, and  we  will  put  an  end  to  this  forever. 
Surely  you  know  what  that  means,"  he  said, 
touching  his  livid  cheek.  "  A  man  does  not 
lie  when  death  has  set  its  finger  upon  him, 
and  I  swear  to  you  that  I  never  harmed — 
But  what  is  the  use?  I  have  my  death  to 
face  alone.  In  the  presence  of  such  a  calam- 
ity one  aspersion  upon  my  character,  more 
or  less,  makes  but  little  difference  to  me  ;  she 


will  have  everything  her  own  way  soon,  at 
any  rate." 

"  But,  Gordon,"  she  insisted,  "  you  were 
crazy  with  fever,  maybe — " 

"  Aunt  Hannah,  I  tell  you  I  could  not  do 
such  a  thing  under  any  conditions.  It  is 
impossible.  Did  she  say  any  one  else  saw 
me  ?  I'll  be  bound  there  was  no  other  wit- 
ness ?"  He  waited  for  an  answer.  "  Ah  !  I 
thought  so.  Well,  I  will  write  now,  and  it 
would  be  kinder  for  you  to  deliver  the  letter 
yourself,  I  think.  You  have  done  so  much 
already,  may  I  ask  this  one  service  more  ?" 

She  brought  him  writing  materials,  and 
kissed  him  as  she  passed  out  of  the  room, 
puzzled  and  anxious. 

Thus  he  was  left  alone  with  his  dilemma, 
to  thresh  out,  as  best  he  might,  the  motive 
that  had  induced  his  wife  to  be  guilty,  as  he 
believed,  of  this  new  perfidy.  The  insistent 
credence  the  old  woman  gave  her  shook  his 
inward  assurance  for  a  moment,  and  before 
he  put  the  final  end  to  their  relations  he 
wished  to  be  doubly  sure  of  his  justice  tow- 
ards Isabel,  as  he  intended  to  show  her  no 


146 

mercy  save  such  consideration  as  the  pro- 
tection of  his  own  name  demanded.  He 
tried  the  case  in  the  courts  of  his  own  mind, 
setting  her  assertion  against  his  self-respect ; 
and  although  he  sought  to  be  an  impartial 
judge,  it  was  beyond  nature  for  any  man  in 
his  position  to  refrain  from  clothing  the  evi- 
dence on  his  own  side  with  undue  impor- 
tance. There  was,  he  reasoned,  the  fact  that 
he  had  been  found  in  his  own  room,  which  he 
had  entered  by  the  garden  door,  that  would 
indicate  that  he  came  in  immediately  out  of 
the  night,  nor  could  he  believe  that  the  most 
callous-hearted  woman,  though  he  placed  his 
wife  high  in  that  category,  could  have  locked 
her  door  quietly  and  have  gone  to  sleep, 
leaving  the  dangerous  maniac  she  pretended 
to  believe  him  loose  upon  the  community. 
Yet  this  must  have  happened  if  Aunt  Han- 
nah's theory  was  correct.  Again  he  assured 
himself  that  his  memory  could  have  played 
him  no  tricks  about  the  events  of  that  fate- 
ful evening.  As  he  sat  looking  out  at  the 
sharp  blue  tree  shadows  traced  on  the  snow, 
and  the  glinting  of  the  evening  sun  on  its 


147 

crystals,  he  could  recall  every  incident  of  the 
scene  in  the  fire-lighted  drawing-room.  Even 
the  smell  of  the  damp  leaves  under  foot  and 
the  sound  of  the  dripping  eaves  came  back  to 
him.  The  picture  was  bitten  into  his  brain 
by  an  acrid  hate  that  spared  him  no  detail. 
He  perfectly  remembered  the  mad  race 
through  the  storm,  the  fall,  and  had  even 
dim  glimpses  of  the  struggle  homeward ;  but 
of  the  interview  in  Isabel's  room  there  re- 
mained, strange  to  say,  no  vestige  of  remem- 
brance to  cloud  his  conviction  that  she  had 
borne  false  witness  against  him.  Having 
sacrificed  her  hair  to  some  caprice  of  her 
own,  she  now  utilized  the  loss,  he  thought, 
to  throw  odium  upon  him  in  the  eyes  of  his 
neighbors.  He  was  puzzled  and  curious  to 
discover  the  motive  that  actuated  her  in 
the  first  instance,  and,  after  much  cogitation, 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  a  morbid  liking 
for  theatrical  effects,  coupled  with  the  terror 
of  the  results  of  her  imprudence,  had  induced 
her  to  create  the  situation  and  the  accom- 
panying tale  of  ill-usage  as  a  catch-sympathy 
for  the  women  of  the  town,  and  more  par- 


148 

ticularly  for  his  old  aunt,  whose  heavy  re- 
spectability, if  enlisted,  would  shield  even  a 
worse  reputation  than  Madame's. 

Although  the  Doctor  honestly  believed 
that  there  was  no  question  about  her  guilt, 
he  had  no  intention  of  rushing  into  the  di- 
vorce courts  with  his  family  disgrace.  He  be- 
longed to  a  class  and  age  when  the  soiled 
family  linen  was  most  rigorously  cleansed  at 
home,  though,  as  was  sometimes  the  case, 
the  culprit  was  rubbed  out  of  life  in  the 
washing  of  it.  Nor  had  he  any  idea  of  taking 
the  law  into  his  own  hands  further  than  he 
judged  his  position  as  head  of  the  family  de- 
manded. But  the  rift  between  them  was  far 
too  broad  to  be  bridged  by  ordinary  courte- 
sy, and  that  he  intended  to  make  her  under- 
stand. He  drew  his  portfolio  towards  him 
and  wrote : 

"  MADAME, — I  am  informed  by  my  aunt, 
Miss  Wickford,  that  you  allege  I  cut  off  your 
hair  the  night  of  my  return  from  the  city. 
How  you  have  managed  to  make  an  impres- 
sion on  so  upright  a  soul  I  cannot  imagine, 


149 

unless  your  success  has  arisen  from  the  inno- 
cence of  guile  which  has  characterized  my 
aunt's  whole  life — an  innocence  which  I  am 
sure  you  will  agree  with  me  is  very  foreign 
to  so  tortuous  a  nature  as  your  own. 

"  I  am  led  to  understand,  from  what  I  hear, 
that  you  are  aware  of  my  discovery  in  re- 
gard to  your  amour — probably  you  saw  me 
through  the  window — and  I  infer  from  the  un- 
mitigated falsehood  of  which  you  have  been 
guilty  that  you  justly  dread  the  consequences 
of  such  revelations  as  I  could  make.  How- 
ever, let  me  assure  you  that  the  mutilation  of 
your  good  looks  was  perfectly  unnecessary. 
It  has  not  been  the  custom  in  my  family 
to  blazon  misfortunes  from  the  house-tops — 
disgraces  we  had  none  until  you  honored  us 
by  marrying  me. 

"I  am  a  man  stricken  by  disease  over  whom 
the  doom  has  been  spoken  ;  were  it  otherwise, 
I  might  be  swayed  to  sever  the  connection 
which,  I  regret,  shackles  us  to  each  other. 
When,  however,  a  person  has  but  a  few  years 
to  live  at  most,  he  harbors  less  concern  for  the 
happiness  of  his  future  than  for  his  present 


I5Q 

tranquillity.  I  therefore  shall  permit  you  to 
continue  to  bear  my  name  and  appear  at  the 
head  of  my  household,  although  I  suppose  it 
is  unnecessary  to  say  that  between  us  all  rela- 
tions have  absolutely  ceased,  save  such  sur- 
veillance of  your  conduct  as  my  good  name 
dictates.  I  warn  you  that  any  further  indis- 
cretion will  be  as  summarily  dealt  with  as 
your  past  levity  might  have  been  had  not  the 
death  of  your  accomplice  in  crime  removed 
you  forever  out  of  the  way  of  the  same  temp- 
tation. From  this,  my  decision,  there  is  no 
appeal,  save  by  way  of  the  courts,  and  you 
will,  I  fancy,  hesitate  before  you  place  your 
conduct  under  the  light  of  legal  examination. 
"  GORDON  WICKFORD." 

He  folded  and  sealed  the  paper,  then  he 
lay  back  among  his  cushions  with  a  sense  of 
rest  in  the  certainty  of  his  decision.  The 
lines  of  his  lonely  future  were  painted  in 
dark  colors,  but  at  least  they  had  assumed  a 
definite  pattern,  and  anything  definite  was 
bearable,  he  thought. 

The  shadows  crept  out  of  the  corners  of 


15* 

the  room,  ingulfing  one  object  after  an- 
other, the  lights  in  the  houses  beyond  the 
hedge  began  to  glimmer,  and  the  snow  took 
on  an  unearthly  bluish  tint  in  the  light  of  the 
young  moon.  Yet  he  sat  there  gazing  out 
of  the  window,  •'  seeing  all  his  own  mischance 
with  a  glassy  countenance."  Memories  of  his 
dead  mother,  of  the  first  bright  promise  of  his 
manhood,  the  short  but  all-absorbing  dream 
of  his  love,  the  rude  awakening  against  which 
he  had  struggled  manfully,  the  falling  of  his 
hereditary  malady  upon  his  devoted  head — 
all  this  he  could  endure  with  the  fortitude  of 
a  strong  man  ;  but  the  disgrace  of  his  wife's 
conduct,  as  it  appeared  to  him,  presented  to 
his  soul  a  cup  whose  bitterness  seemed 
greater  than  he  could  bear.  The  sense  alone 
of  having  something  to  hide  was  distasteful 
to  his  open  character,  yet  he  would  shelter 
her  to  the  extent  of  giving  her  a  name  and 
place  in  society — this  his  family  honor  de- 
manded, but  more  than  this  his  self-respect 
forbade. 


CHAPTER   XII 

WlCKFORD's  reverie  was  disturbed  by  the 
entrance  of  a  servant  bringing  candles  and 
his  evening  meal ;  his  aunt  followed  in  a  lit- 
tle while. 

"You  have  been  asleep?"  she  queried, 
hopefully. 

"  No,"  he  answered.  "  My  letter  is  written. 
I  have  not  slept,  Aunt  Hannah." 

"  Gordon,  dearie,  I  hope  you  have  been 
kind  in  what  you  wrote ;  and  have  you 
thought  over  what  I  said  ?"  she  suggested. 

"Yes,  yes,"  he  replied,  listlessly.  "  I  have 
thought  it  all  over  again  and  again,  but  I'm 
just  as  sure  as  I  was  before  that  I  am  inno- 
cent of  the  brutality  with  which  she  charges 
me.  Delirijous  or  sane,  the  general  trend  of 
a  man's  character  is  the  same,  and,  whatever 
I  may  be,  I  am  at  least  a  man  and  a  gentle- 
man ;  to  have  used  physical  force  towards  her 


153 

would  have  been  to  forfeit  my  claim  to  both 
distinctions. 

Miss  Wickford  began  to  remonstrate,  but 
he  stopped  her  pleading.  "  Dear  aunt,  let 
us  not  talk  about  it  any  more,"  he  said. 
"  What  I  have  written  is  written.  Come  and 
sit  beside  me,  and  tell  me  about  yourself. 
Tell  me  about  yourself  —  won't  you?  Do 
you  remember  how  you  used  to  keep  me 
quiet  with  the  stories  of  grandfather's  Ind- 
ian adventures  when  I  was  a  boy.  What  I 
want  to  hear  now  is  of  your  own  doings. 
Somehow  your  life  always  seems  so  whole- 
some and  of  a  piece — not  like  the  patchwork 
that  most  of  us  make  of  our  existence." 
She  knew  his  every  turn  of  expression,  and 
she  understood  that  expostulation  would  be 
useless  now.  Indeed,  as  she  looked  at  the 
firm,  set  face,  where  the  bones  were  sharply 
articulated  by  illness,  the  assurance  she  har- 
bored of  her  power  to  heal  the  breach  be- 
tween Wickford  and  his  wife  began  to  ebb 
away  and  leave  her  high  and  dry  on  the 
sharp  fact  of  their  difference. 

When  he  was  tired  she  bade  him  good- 


154 

night,  and,  picking  up  the  letter,  went  to  find 
Isabel,  hoping,  good  soul,  that  she  might 
help  the  girl  through  the  first  bitterness  of 
the  bad  half-hour  before  her. 

Madame  was  toasting  her  feet  at  her  bed- 
room fire,  too  anxious  over  the  fate  of  Miss 
Wickford's  mission  to  occupy  herself  in  any 
way.  She  looked  so  pretty  in  her  "  loose 
gown  "  and  short,  curling  hair  that  Miss  Han- 
nah wondered  if  it  had  not  been  unwise  to  in- 
terfere instead  of  sending  the  young  creature 
to  make  her  own  peace  with  beauty  for  advo- 
cate. The  girl  greeted  her  lovingly. 

"  Well  ?"  she  asked.  "  Tell  me  quickly  ; 
what  did  he  say?  Will  he  see  me?  Oh, 
Aunt  Hannah  you  have  a  letter — give  it  to 
me — give  it  to  me  quickly  !" 

"  Isabel,  my  dear,"  said  the  other,  "  don't 
be  in  such  a  hurry  ;  I'm  afraid  this  isn't  a  very 
nice  letter  Gordon  has  written  you,  though 
I  said  everything  I  could  think  of  in  your 
behalf.  I  told  you  he  could  not  remember ; 
and  if  he  don't — God  help  you,  child,  for  the 
Wickfords  are  powerful  set  in  their  ways. 
There,  there,  don't  look  so  white ;  we  still 


155 

have  shot  in  our  locker — as  my  father  used 
to  say  ;  you  must  see  him  yourself  if  it  comes 
to  the  worst." 

The  young  woman  took  the  letter  contain- 
ing the  decision  of  her  fate  ;  she  tore  it  open 
with  feverish  haste,  and  carried  it  over  to  the 
far  table,  feeling  unable  to  face  its  possible 
contents  under  even  such  kindly  scrutiny  as 
Miss  Hannah's.  Madame  read  it  through 
with  that  lightning  rapidity  which  great  anx- 
iety begets.  It  seemed  only  a  few  lines  to 
her  in  her  breathless  hurry,  but  in  that  mo- 
ment any  illusory  hopes  of  happiness  she 
might  have  entertained  were  stripped  from 
her,  and  she  was  brought  face  to  face  with 
the  extent  of  his  overwhelming  contempt. 
"  Read  it !"  she  whispered,  with  white  lips, 
extending  the  letter ;  it  rattled  in  her  shak- 
ing hands.  "  Read  it,  and  see  what  hope 
there  is  for  me."  It  seemed  to  her  as  if 
hours  elapsed  before  the  old  woman's  spec- 
tacles were  adjusted  and  she  had  mastered 
the  contents  of  the  faint,  trembling  lines 
which  bore  testimony  to  the  writer's  bodily 
weakness.  Somehow  the  tremulous  hand- 


156 

writing  made  the  harsh  resentment  of  the 
note  more  impressive  by  contrast. 

"  Poor  child!  poor  child!"  murmured  Miss 
Hannah.  "  Don't  lose  heart,  Isabel ;  give 

7  "      o 

him  time,  dearie  —  time  does  a  deal  in  this 
world,  though  it's  hard  for  the  young  to  be- 
lieve it." 

"  No,"  the  girl  returned,  in  a  queer,  stifled 
voice.  "  He  has  written  exactly  what  he 
means.  I  shall  not  try  any  more  ;  the  spirit 
has  gone  out  of  me.  I  will  stay  and  bear 
my  punishment  for  folly  no  greater  than 
many  another  woman  has  been  forgiven. 
Aunt  Hannah,  as  God  is  my  judge,  I  have 
been  guilty  of  no  crime,  save  a  foolish  flirta- 
tion. You  will  go  now,  dear,  won't  you  ? 
I  shall  be  able  to  talk  in  the  morning.  Just 
now  I  am  too  unhappy." 

The  old  woman  called  her  servant,  and 
with  a  lighted  horn  lantern  to  guide  her  foot- 
steps— for  the  moon  was  now  long  abed — 
she  picked  her  way  through  the  snow  to  her 
own  door. 

Isabel  wrote  a  pitiful  little  protest  of  her 
innocence,  begging  forgiveness  for  her  follies, 


157 

which  she  sent  the  Doctor,  but  he  took  no 
notice  of  it,  and  she  subsided  into  despair. 
Her  spirit  was,  as  she  said,  gone  out  of  her. 
She  performed  the  ordinary  daily  tasks  that 
presented  themselves,  getting  through  one 
thing  after  another  with  a  stolid  determina- 
tion not  to  be  idle,  for  she  knew  very  well 
that  she  could  only  keep  back  her  insistent 
sorrow  by  unremitting  employment.  The 
countless  avenues  of  helpfulness  that  her  posi- 
tion would  ordinarily  have  opened  were  her- 
metically sealed  to  her  by  the  ostracism  of 
society.  Although  she  was  debarred  from 
natural  relations  with  her  equals,  there  were 
always  abundant  opportunities  in  a  seaport 
town  for  the  expenditure  of  energy  and 
money  among  the  suffering.  These  chances 
of  unselfish  occupation  she  seized  upon,  and 
sought  out  cases  of  distress  with  real  eager- 
ness, hoping  always  that  Wickford  might 
some  day  understand  that  her  tardy  love  for 
him  and  a  longing  for  his  approval  was  the 
charm  which  lured  her  into  these  unaccus- 
tomed places. 

In  spite  of  her  internal  revolt  against  the 


158 

repulsive  squalor  of  poverty,  she  tried  to  in- 
augurate physical  comfort  and  humanizing 
influences  in  the  hovels  of  the  very  poor ; 
but  it  was  a  mortification  to  find  that  even 
here,  although  her  money  was  accepted  readi- 
ly enough,  it  was  impossible  for  her  to  get 
into  any  personal  relations  with  the  women. 
The  actual  assistance  she  gave  they  treated 
as  their  due,  but  her  timid  advances  to  kind- 
liness were  repulsed,  and  any  morsel  of  advice 
she  hazarded  was  overlooked  with  a  certain 
hauteur  that  these  blameless  wives  felt  justi- 
fied in  assuming  towards  one  who  had,  as 
they  said, "  not  a  shred  of  character  to  bless 
herself  with."  Formerly,  her  pride  might 
have  taken  up  arms  at  the  rebuffs  she  expe- 
rienced, but  in  her  desolation  it  had  com- 
pletely deserted  her,  leaving  her  a  prey  to  a 
great  hunger  and  thirst  after  affection,  in 
which  she  gladly  accepted  even  such  crumbs 
of  toleration  as  fell  to  her  share.  It  was 
strange  to  remember  the  vanished  sense  of 
personal  power  and  the  combative  desire  to 
meet  a  difficulty  more  than  half-way  which 
had  formerly  characterized  her,  when,  at  pres- 


159 

ent,  she  was  conscious  of  a  morbid  shrinking 
from  an  issue  of  any  kind,  and  even  her  man- 
ner was  permeated  by  a  deprecatory  courtesy 
with  which  she  sought  to  buy  every  one's 
suffrages. 

Although  Miss  Wickford  championed  her 
loyally,  insisting  that  a  decent  amount  of 
consideration  be  shown  Isabel,  even  the  im- 
pact of  the  old  woman's  immense  influence 
could  not  compel  those  cordial  and  intimate 
relations  which  are  the  best  substitute  a 
country  town  can  offer  for  city  gayety.  A 
certain  number,  indeed,  did  call  upon  Ma- 
dame Wickford  when  it  was  clearly  under- 
stood that  the  Doctor  intended  to  uphold 
her  reputation,  but  there  was  absolutely 
no  spontaneity  in  their  coming,  and  both 
hostess  and  guests  were  painfully  aware  that 
their  presence  was  a  tribute  to  the  position 
of  the  Wickford  family,  and  in  no  sense  any 
indication  of  their  belief  in  Madame's  per- 
sonal respectability.  Probably  the  only  pleas- 
ure anybody  derived  from  these  visits  was 
the  mutual  relief  they  all  experienced  when 
the  door  closed  behind  the  departing  callers. 


i6o 

With  the  exception  of  Aunt  Hannah,  there 
was  really  only  one  person  who  came  to  the 
old  house  for  love  of  its  mistress.  Johnnie 
ran  in  and  out  as  usual,  welcomed  with  new 
tenderness  by  Isabel,  who  found  a  great  sol- 
ace in  the  child's  companionship.  While  she 
was  with  him  it  was  possible  to  throw  aside 
the  eternal  sense  of  disapprobation  that  op- 
pressed her  in  the  presence  of  grown  people  ; 
she  could  laugh,  talk,  and  run  about  with- 
out any  fear  of  misconception,  and  the  very 
quaintness  of  the  channels  in  which  his  child- 
ish thought  flowed  seemed  to  drain  the  stag- 
nant morasses  of  her  heart,  whose  natural 
outlets  had  been  unfortunately  dammed.  It 
was  one  of  the  few  pleasures  of  her  life  to 
play  with  him  and  tell  him  stories  by  the 
hundreds.  They  were  once  sitting  by  the 
fire  in  the  twilight,  hand  in  hand,  as  she  fin- 
ished the  account  of  the  miseries  of  the  un- 
fortunate prince  and  princess  whom  the  Yel- 
low Dwarf  persecuted  so  shamelessly. 

"  So  the  mermaid  turned  them  into  two 
beautiful  palm-trees  by  the  ocean,  and  al- 
though they  are  near  together  and  the  same 


breeze  bends  them  to  and  fro,  they  never 
touch — and  they  never  will  touch,  Johnnie, 
never  as  long  as  the  world  stands,"  she  con- 
cluded, gazing  into  the  hot  wood  fire.  The 
child  also  sat  silently  thinking  for  a  few  mo- 
ments, then  he  looked  up  at  her. 

"  Aunt  Isabel,"  he  demanded, "  what  makes 
all  your  stories  end  up  bad?  Mother's 
always  have  'So  they  lived  in  peace  and 
died  in  Greece'  at  the  finish,  and  'Once 
upon  a  time  when  pigs  were  swine  and  pea- 
cocks chewed  tobacco,'  to  begin  wif." 

"  Ah,  little  boy,"  she  replied,  "  I  expect 
that's  because  mother  has  you  all  for  her 
own  to  love  her.  Maybe  if  you  belonged  to 
me  my  stories  would  turn  out  better,  too." 

The  child  ruminated  for  a  while,  then  he 
announced :  "  I  'spec  I  can't  give  you  much 
of  me,  'cos  father  and  mother  wants  such  lots, 
but" — with  an  air  of  great  generosity — "  I'll 
give  you  the  end  of  my  nose  all  for  your 
owny  own  if  you'll  tell  me  Jack  the  Giant- 
killer." 

She  put  her  black  mood  from  her,  and 
laughingly  kissed  him  before  she  bought  the 


162 


right  in  his  very  small  pug  at  the  price  de- 
manded. They  had  their  tea  together  after- 
wards, and,  as  usual,  Johnnie  ate  too  much, 
but  was  perfectly  happy  after  his  own  fashion. 
The  peculiar  strain  of  childishness  which  per- 
meated Isabel's  character  made  it  no  great 
effort  for  her  to  bring  herself  into  tune  with 
the  little  fellow's  amusements ;  indeed,  she  en- 
joyed his  companionship  only  less  than  he 
did  hers  during  the  long  days  of  her  hus- 
band's convalescence,  when  the  sharp  fear  of 
present  danger  had  given  place  to  the  re- 
actionary lassitude  that  comes  with  the  assur- 
ance of  danger  past. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

WlCKFORD  had  not  yet  come  out  of  his 
room,  but  Aunt  Hannah,  who  visited  him 
daily,  told  Isabel  that  she  might  expect  to 
see  him  about  at  any  moment.  The  good 
old  woman  kept  her  further  observation  of 
his  condition  to  herself.  It  was  impossible 
for  her  to  add  to  the  girl's  already  heavy 
burden,  and  although  she  reproached  herself 
constantly  for  the  cowardice,  as  she  called 
it,  that  fettered  her  tongue,  the  time  never 
arrived  for  telling  Isabel  of  the  ravages  of 
the  cancer,  as  it  progressed  with  alarming 
rapidity  in  the  Doctor's  weak  condition. 
The  disfigurement  was  already  very  notice- 
able; it  could  not  be  very  long  before  his 
face  would  become  disgusting,  Miss  Wick- 
ford  thought,  with  heavy  forebodings  of  the 
suffering  that  lay  before  these  two,  whom 
she  would  so  gladly  help,  were  it  possible, 


164 

but  whom  fate  and  inherent  spiritual  differ- 
ence had  put  asunder. 

Strange  as  it  may  seem,  if  Madame  har- 
bored hope  from  any  quarter,  it  was  in  her 
husband's  very  infirmity  that  she  saw  her 
one  chance  of  reconquering  some  portion  of 
Wickford's  affection.  There  were  no  trained 
nurses  in  that  day,  and  from  what  she  heard  as 
well  as  from  what  her  recent  charity-visiting 
among  a  scrofulous,  fish-eating  people  had 
taught  her,  she  knew  that  in  the  course  of 
the  disease  it  would  reach  a  period  when 
constant  and  arduous  nursing  was  demanded. 
It  was  then  that  she  reckoned  upon  the  sac- 
rifice of  her  entire  life,  winning  from  him 
some  belief  in  her  protestations  of  innocence 
and  love.  Even  this  mirage  of  a  reconcilia- 
tion, which  must,  she  knew,  take  place  under 
the  shadow  of  death,  was  something  in  the 
desert  of  her  loneliness,  and  it  enabled  her  to 
bear  the  succeeding  days  of  a  life  that  had 
lost  all  savor. 

Upborne  by  the  thought  of  possible  re- 
union even  under  such  circumstances  and 
after  so  long  a  time,  she  plunged  into  the 


slums  of  the  seaport  town,  helping  where 
she  could,  and  neither  sparing  herself  nor  her 
purse  in  the  effort  to  fit  herself  for  the  care 
of  that  dear  sufferer  whose  approval  was  now 
the  inspiration  of  her  life.  She  managed  at 
the  cost  of  incredible  patience  and  effort  to 
create  a  place  for  herself  in  the  old  town, 
although  her  reputation  clogged  her  at  every 
step,  and  at  times  she  cringed  under  the  sense 
of  the  unjust  proportion  her  punishment  bore 
to  her  offence. 

"  It  is  like  paying  off  a  mortgage,"  she 
said  to  Miss  Wickford.  "  With  my  utter- 
most efforts  I  only  seem  able  to  keep  down 
the  interest  on  gossip,  but  never  to  reduce 
the  principal  of  my  past  folly." 

The  two  women  had  become  very  fond  of 
each  other,  and  spent  much  of  their  time  to- 
gether. But,  as  it  happened,  the  old  lady 
was  not  with  Isabel  when  Wickford  made  his 
appearance,  after  so  many  months  of  seclu- 
sion. 

It  was  one  of  the  soft  days  that  come 
now  and  then  in  late  winter — truant  chil- 
dren of  spring,  that  deceive  even  the  home- 


1 66 


keeping  birds  into  a  summery  twittering, 
days  that  make  the  evergreens  hold  up  their 
heads,  sure  that  their  verdant  doublet  is  the 
"  only  wear,"  and  sometimes  tempt  gold  cro- 
cuses and  over-anxious  trees  to  an  untimely 
blossoming.  Although  Wickford  had  seized 
upon  one  excuse  after  another  to  delay  his 
first  appearance,  there  seemed  to  be  no  fur- 
ther reason  imaginable  why  he  should  not 
resume  his  duties,  if  he  ever  intended,  as  he 
said,  "  to  do  what  good  he  could,  instead  of 
skulking  behind  closed  doors  with  despair 
for  a  companion." 

In  his  silent  meditations  he  had  more 
than  ever  determined  that  no  human  eye 
should  ever  look  upon  his  disfigurement, 
and  his  preparations  for  hiding  his  face 
were  already  made.  There,  in  a  box,  lay 
the  broad-brimmed  Quaker  hat  with  a  deep 
ruffle  of  doubled  crape  sewn  on  around 
the  edge  of  its  brim.  Sooner  or  later  he 
must  let  that  veil  fall  between  him  and  all 
the  glory  of  the  outer  world  —  that  dear, 
beautiful  world  which  called  him  to  forget 
his  misfortunes  in  ministering  to  suffering 


16? 

humanity.  It  seemed  to  him  as  if  he  were 
assuming  the  position  of  chief  mourner  at  his 
own  funeral — indeed,  the  feeling  of  human 
kinship  between  him  and  the  healthy  people 
around  him  was  buried  under  a  weight  of  suf- 
fering that  was  great  enough  to  have  ground 
out  all  human  sympathy  in  a  lesser  man. 

Evening  had  come  on,  and  the  bare  boughs 
were  etched  black  against  a  lemon-colored 
sky,  which  melted  into  orange  where  it  kissed 
the  horizon.  He  could  see  even  the  rough 
little  swollen  buttons  on  the  nearest  tree  that 
betokened  the  coming  blossoms.  A  soft 
blue  haze  permeated  the  still  atmosphere, 
through  which  the  smoke  of  the  chimneys 
rose  straight  as  an  arrow.  If  he  were  going, 
"  then  it  were  well  it  were  done  quickly." 
All  this  gold  and  purple,  these  red  browns 
and  tender  grays,  must  henceforth  come  to 
him  dulled  by  his  veil.  He  looked  about 
him,  greedily  drinking  in  the  flood  of  color 
as  a  man  might  for  whom  the  executioner 
waits.  Then,  with  a  gasp,  he  settled  the  hat 
upon  his  head,  and  the  black  crape  fell  be- 
tween him  and  the  outer  world — forever! 


i68 


He  strode  out  into  the  garden,  too  full 
of  his  own  sad  thoughts  to  notice  Johnnie 
as  he  passed  him.  The  horrors  that  his  veil 
covered  were  too  deeply  impressed  upon 
his  imagination  for  him  to  realize  fully  the 
strange  and  repellent  figure  he  presented,  so 
soon  do  we  become  familiar  with  any  phe- 
nomenal circumstance  that  is  allied  with  our 
individuality.  He  was  astonished,  therefore, 
to  hear  a  child's  scream  behind  him,  and,  turn- 
ing with  his  natural  instinct  to  help  anything 
in  distress,  he  lifted  the  frightened  boy  in  his 
arms. 

"  Why,  little  man !"  he  exclaimed,  as 
Johnnie  redoubled  his  howls,  twisting  him- 
self like  an  eel  in  the  Doctor's  grasp.  "  You 
must  tell  me  what  is  the  matter — what  hurts 
you." 

"  Oh,  let  me  go  —  please  let  me  go !  I'll 
never  be  bad  no  more !"  wailed  Johnnie,  quite 
sure  that  the  devil  had  him  in  very  earnest 
this  time.  He  was  too  wrought  up  to  heed 
Wickford's  expostulations,  or  to  answer  his 
questions. 

The  puzzled  man  did  his  best  to  soothe 


i6g 

the  child,  for  he  was  by  this  time  nearly 
frightened  into  a  fit ;  his  screams  had  be- 
come hoarse  and  his  lips  were  livid  when 
Madame,  hearing  the  commotion  as  she 
sat  at  her  embroidery,  ran  down  bareheaded 
to  find  out  what  was  the  matter. 

As  she  stepped  into  the  twilight  she,  too, 
shuddered  as  her  eyes  fell  on  the  gaunt, 
sinister  figure,  with  the  crape- covered  face, 
whose  clothing  bagged  over  emaciated  limbs. 

"  Who  are  you  ?"  she  demanded,  in  as  de- 
cided a  voice  as  she  could  muster.  "  Put  the 
boy  down  —  don't  you  see  you  are  frighten- 
ing him  ?" 

Then  the  situation  dawned  upon  the  Doc- 
tor. He  set  the  child  on  his  feet,  and  the  little 
fellow  lost  no  time  in  hiding  his  head  in  Ma- 
dame's  skirts.  She  laid  a  reassuring  hand 
on  the  boy's  head,  and  turning  towards  the 
veiled  figure,  "  If  you  are  a  patient  of  the 
Doctor's,"  she  said,  "  he  is  too  ill  to  see 
any  one  ;  if  not,  you  are  trespassing  most 
unwarrantably." 

Wickford  looked  at  her,  and  even  the  twi- 
light revealed  to  him  the  tangle  of  short,  sun- 


170 

ny  curls  and  the  new  wistful  expression  that 
gave  her  an  appearance  of  almost  preternat- 
ural youth.  If  he  noticed  these  changes  in 
her,  they  must  both  be  changed  indeed,  he 
thought,  since  she  evidently  did  not  know 
him  at  all.  There  was  a  certain  bitter  humor 
in  being  ordered  out  of  his  own  house,  and 
a  low,  mocking  laugh  came  from  behind  the 
veil.  ''Why  don't  you  go?"  she  demanded, 
as  Johnnie  began  to  sob  anew.  "  You  have 
no  business  here;  you  are  frightening  the 
child." 

"  He  must  get  used  to  me  as  best  he  can," 
Wickford  answered.  "  I  am  his  mother's 
physician.  As  for  you,  it  matters  very  little 
whether  you  like  my  appearance  or  not,  as 
we  shall  not  often  have  the  ineffable  felicity 
of  seeing  each  other." 

She  knew  the  voice  instantly,  and  stag- 
gered back  under  the  revelation  of  the  dire 
wreck  disease  had  wrought. 

"I  —  I  —  did  not  know  you,"  she  stam- 
mered, and  her  words  died  in  her  throat. 
The  Doctor  was  walking  down  the  garden 
now,  without  noticing  her  halting  excuses. 


Ah,  God  !  that  she  should  have  stabbed  him 
thus  on  his  first  return  to  the  world. 

"  Johnnie,  dear !"  Isabel  whispered,  "  you 
were  frightened  at  nothing.  It  was  only 
your  dear  Doctor — please  run  after  him, 
Johnnie,  and  tell  him  you  are  not  afraid  any 
more." 

"  But  I  am  'fraid !  And  I  don't  want  to 
go  after  him,"  cried  the  boy. 

"  Ah,  but  it  will  hurt  him  so.  Do  it  just 
because  you  love  me,"  she  pleaded. 

"  I  won't  go!  It  ain't  my  dear  Doctor,  an' 
I'm  scared!"  cried  the  little  fellow,  resolutely 
clinging  to  her  skirts. 

"  But  I  thought  you  were  such  a  man, 
dear,"  she  argued. 

"  Well,"  said  Johnnie,  lifting  his  tear- 
washed  eyes  to  her  face,  "  I'm  a  man  when 
it's  day,  but  I'm  jus'  a  'ittle  boy  now." 

It  was  no  use  arguing  any  longer;  the 
gate  clicked  as  the  tall  figure  turned  into 
the  road  and  was  soon  lost  in  the  waning 
light. 

Wickford  was  hurt  and  grieved  to  an  un- 
reasonable degree  by  the  boy's  terror.  It 


172 

brought  home  to  him  the  sense  of  his  disfig- 
urement in  a  new  and  poignant  fashion. 

He  had  always  been  a  special  favorite  with 
children,  and  he  remembered  now  that  his  old 
nurse  once  told  him  that  God  gave  the  love 
of  His  little  ones  as  indemnity  to  men  fated 
for  sudden  death  or  great  misfortune.  The 
prophecy  had  been  fulfilled  in  his  case,  and 
he  now  prayed  humbly  as  he  walked  that  at 
least  this  consolation  be  not  taken  from  him 
in  his  affliction. 

Remembering  Johnnie's  fright,  he  chose 
an  old  paralytic  whom  he  knew  to  be  be- 
yond surprises  for  his  first  attempt  at  pro- 
fessional visiting.  But  even  here  the  bit- 
terness of  seeing  the  effect  he  produced 
was  not  spared  him,  for  the  servant  at  the 
door  fled  screaming  to  assure  her  mistress 
that  a  masked  footpad  was  below.  Wick- 
ford  controlled  the  almost  ungovernable 
impulse  to  return  immediately  to  his  own 
rooms,  where  he  might  at  least  be  spared 
the  sight  of  the  horror  he  inspired.  It  was 
probably  the  hardest  and  longest  ten  min- 
utes of  his  life  when  he  stood  there  waiting 


173 

with  outward  quietude,  but  inwardly  tort- 
ured by  the  anticipation  of  what  lay  before 
him. 

This  was  a  household  of  women,  and  he 
could  hear  the  flutter  of  skirts  and  the  whis- 
pering going  on  up -stairs  before  the  mis- 
tress put  her  head  over  the  banister  and 
tremblingly  asked  what  he  wanted. 

"  I  am  Doctor  Wickford,"  he  answered. 
"  I  have  come  to  see  your  father.  May  I 
come  up?" 

Again  the  beauty  of  his  voice  claimed 
recognition,  and  the  old  man's  daughter 
bade  him  welcome.  But  although  she  would 
have  given  a  finger  to  have  known  his 
reason  for  wearing  it,  she  could  not  mus- 
ter courage  to  ask  him  the  explanation  of 
his  crape  veil.  There  was  a  silent  dignity 
about  him  that  kept  impertinent  curiosity  in 
check.  People  questioned  his  aunt,  his  wife, 
even  his  servants,  but  somehow  no  one  had 
the  temerity  to  ask  him  personally  about 
his  peculiar  dress. 

Indeed,  in  an  incredibly  short  time  the 
town  became  accustomed  to  the  strange 


174 

figure  of  the  veiled  Doctor,  and  he  ex- 
cited as  little  comment  among  his  neigh- 
bors as  the  town  pump.  It  was  true  that 
some  of  his  old  patients  talked  of  calling 
in  another  physician,  but  they  came  back 
before  long,  glad  to  buy  his  superb  skill  at 
the  cost  of  a  few  disagreeable  sensations  that 
soon  wore  off.  As  for  the  children,  if  they, 
like  Johnnie,  cried  at  first,  it  was  not  a  great 
while  before  he  reconquered  their  suffrages 
and  taught  them  to  search  his  capacious 
pockets  again  for  sweetmeats  just  as  they 
did  before  his  illness.  He  was  astonished 
and  pleased  to  find  how  rapidly  the  excite- 
ment over  his  appearance  wore  away,  and 
he  gradually  came  to  forget  it  even  himself 
until  a  chance  encounter  with  some  stran- 
ger reminded  him  that  he  was  not  and  could 
never  again  be  a  man  like  other  men. 

So  Wickford  took  his  old  place  in  society, 
healing  and  comforting  wherever  his  pro- 
fession called  him,  infinitely  pitiful,  infinitely 
tender  to  all  conditions  of  suffering  human- 
ity save  always  the  one  woman  who  sat  in 
his  desolate  home.  Gradually  his  mind  ac- 


175 

customed  itself  to  the  burden  he  had  to 
bear,  and  the  strength  of  the  man  enabled 
him  to  accept  the  inevitable  at  first  with 
silent  stoicism,  which  custom  softened  into 
resignation. 


CHAPTER    XIV 

EVEN  an  insignificant  occupation,  followed 
systematically  for  its  own  sake,  will  reward 
the  devotee  with  at  least  temporary  relief 
from  mental  depression.  But  Wickford's 
genuine  enthusiasm  for  his  profession  did 
even  more  than  this  for  him.  By-and-by  it 
filled  all  the  waste  places  in  his  life  with  a 
sense  of  vital  and  personal  usefulness  to  hu- 
manity, that  brought  him  a  peace  so  nearly 
akin  to  happiness  that  he  rarely  missed  the 
other  acutely. 

However,  with  Madame  there  was  no  such 
beneficent  result  attainable,  primarily  be- 
cause, womanlike,  the  chief  energies  of  her 
existence  concentrated  themselves  in  what 
she  felt  rather  than  in  what  she  did,  and  for 
the  second  reason  that  her  whole  life  being 
planned  with  a  view  towards  the  reconquest 
of  her  husband's  affection,  her  mind  was 


177 

/ 
consequently  occupied  with  the  reflection  of 

her  charities  on  him  more  than  with  the  di- 
rect good  she  accomplished. 

She  saw  him  going  back  and  forward  on 
his  rounds,  and  although  she  sought  once 
or  twice  to  get  speech  with  him,  he  would 
walk  on  without  heeding  her  until  she  gave 
up  her  attempts  in  despair.  Aunt  Hannah 
argued  with  him  in  vain ;  he  did  not  defend 
himself,  but  remonstrances  made  no  varia- 
tion in  his  conduct. 

Once  when  the  spring  had  become  well 
established  and  the  swallows  were  returning 
to  their  old  nests,  she  ran  across  him  in  one 
of  her  visits  to  a  house  where  poverty  and 
disease  had  made  themselves  direfully  at 
home. 

The  child  slipping  away  from  life  in  this 
tumble-down  place  possessed  a  certain  an- 
gelic beauty  that  fascinated  her  and  awak- 
ened a  tender  interest  she  could  not  feel 
for  the  bedridden  old  men  and  women  or 
the  loathly  diseased  creatures  who  claimed 
her  assistance.  His  delicate  beauty  sep- 
arated him  from  his  surroundings,  and  she 


fancied  he  must  suffer  under  their  dearth 
of  prettiness  as  much  as  she  would  have 
done  in  his  place.  Therefore  she  usually 
added  to  her  basket  of  dainties  something 
that  might  amuse  the  little  invalid,  shut  in 
by  four  mouldy  walls.  To-day  it  was  a  crab- 
apple  branch  she  carried  ;  full  of  soft  pink 
bloom  and  rosy  buds,  it  made  the  air  sweet 
with  its  rare,  fresh  perfume,  the  most  delight- 
ful essence  that  the  whole  year  distils. 

As  she  stopped  a  moment  on  the  threshold, 
the  sinking  sun  turned  her  curls  to  a  golden 
aureole  and  the  soft  wind  blew  her  light 
skirts  more  closely  about  her;  standing  thus, 
with  her  flowery  bough  as  sceptre,  it  seemed 
to  the  weary  Doctor  within  that  she  must 
be  the  embodiment  of  Spring  herself  pass- 
ing through  the  land.  Her  beauty  appealed 
powerfully  to  the  aesthetic  impulses  of  his 
nature,  which  were  tortured  with  the  hours 
he  had  spent  watching  the  dying  child  in 
the  fetid  atmosphere  and  unlovely  surround- 
ings that  belong  to  the  narrow  quarters  where 
poverty  makes  its  grim  fight  with  starvation. 

Isabel  did  not  see  Wickford  at  first ;  all 


179 

the  glory  of  the  outer  world  was  still  in 
her  eyes  and  blinded  her  to  the  half-dark- 
ness of  the  cottage.  She  crossed  the  room 
and  laid  the  apple  bough  near  the  child's 
thin  hands. 

"  How  are  you,  Tom  ?"  she  asked,  kindly. 
Then,  as  her  sight  became  accustomed  to 
the  dim  light,  "  Why,  poor  little  fellow !" 
she  exclaimed,  "you  don't  seem  as  well  as 
usual.  Mrs.  Saunders,  has  he  been  worse  ? 
Why  didn't  you  let  me  know  ?" 

A  gaunt  woman,  in  rusty  black,  who  sat 
staring  before  her  at  the  foot  of  the  bed, 
looked  up  stolidly  and  answered  :  "  It  ain't 
no  use,  Madame  Wickford.  He  don't  know 
nobody  now ;  he'll  go  out  with  the  tide, 
same  as  his  pa  did  a  year  ago." 

Isabel  looked  over  at  the  wasted  little 
figure,  the  transparent  claw-like  hands,  the 
white  face  where  purplish  eyelids  lay  over 
soft  eyes  that  had  always  greeted  her  so 
gladly.  Was  this  stillness  death  already? 
she  wondered.  She  had  never  seen  the  King 
of  Terrors ;  he  awed  her,  and  made  her 
throat  contract  and  her  heart  beat  violently. 


i8o 

If  she  could  only  run  away,  she  thought,  or 
if  she  could  help  Tom ;  but  to  sit  here  quies- 
cent, waiting  for  the  awful  presence,  as  his 
mother  did,  was  intolerable.  In  her  effort 
to  find  help  somewhere  she  exclaimed : 

"  But  you  must  send  immediately  for  the 
Doctor;  maybe  he  can  do  something  yet." 

"  I  am  here  already;  there  can  be  nothing 
more  done,"  answered  a  voice  from  the 
gloom,  and,  coming  forward,  Wickford  felt 
the  boy's  fluttering  pulse. 

Isabel  could  have  screamed  with  her  sense 
of  nervous  terror  as  the  tall,  veiled  figure 
emerged  out  of  the  gloom.  Her  impulse  to 
flight  was  almost  irresistible.  Every  nerve 
trembled  as  she  looked  from  the  Doctor  to 
the  child,  and  then  to  the  stony,  hard-faced 
mother,  with  her  gnarled,  work-worn  hands 
clasped  before  her,  awaiting  the  last  flicker 
of  the  fading  life.  If  only  the  woman  would 
cry  out,  if  only  Wickford  would  speak  again  ; 
but  they  sat  silent,  while  the  child's  labored 
breathing  and  the  ticking  of  the  clock  were 
all  that  broke  the  stillness  in  the  chamber 
of  death. 


i8r 


The  rosy  glow  in  the  west  faded  to  ashen 
gray  as  the  day  burned  itself  out ;  still  they 
sat  there  waiting.  Sometimes  the  woman 
would  rise  and  look  at  the  child  for  a  mo- 
ment, or  lay  her  hand  on  him  with  an  awk- 
ward but  infinitely  tender  caress.  Some- 
times the  Doctor's  rich  voice  broke  the  si- 
lence reciting  a  comforting  text,  or  he  would 
pass  over  to  the  bedside  and  stand  beside  it. 

The  woman  made  no  protest  against  her 
grief;  she  was  acquainted  with  sorrow,  and 
bore  it  with  that  pitiful  stoicism  the  very 
poor  acquire  from  long  familiarity  with  mis- 
fortune. Isabel  felt  herself  outside  of  the 
relations  which  her  husband  had  established 
with  the  other  two.  She  belonged  to  a  dif- 
ferent world ;  in  joy  they  might  bridge  the 
chasm  that  lay  between  them,  but  in  great 
sorrow  she  must  always  stand  aloof. 

It  was  a  still  evening,  but  the  little  house 
stood  so  near  the  docks  that  the  faint  lapping 
of  the  water  on  the  wooden  piers  was  some- 
times audible.  Isabel  strained  her  ears  to 
catch  the  soft,  rippling  sound  the  tide  makes 
when  it  turns,  that  tide  which  was  to  carry 


182 


the  child  out  alone  into  the  Unknowable. 
She  knew  the  superstition  was  a  common 
one  among  the  towns-people,  and  although 
at  another  time  she  might  have  laughed  at 
it,  her  present  credence  was  commanded  by 
the  stony  agony  of  the  woman  before  her. 

There  it  was  now  —  she  caught  it  at  last ! 
— the  sibilant  voice  of  the  receding  waters. 
The  mother  heard  it  too,  and  leaned  over  the 
bed  with  a  white,  twitching  face.  Wickford 
drew  near  and  laid  a  kindly  hand  on  her 
shoulder.  The  child's  eyelids  fluttered  for 
a  moment,  then  they  opened  ;  he  seemed  to 
recognize  his  mother,  and  smiled.  Near  the 
window  where  Isabel  was  sitting  a  cat  cried  ; 
the  animal  suddenly  sprang  to  the  window- 
ledge  and  began  scratching  at  the  panes. 
Isabel's  blood  curdled ;  she  sickened  at  the 
idea  suggested,  and  started  up  as  the  deso- 
late wail  of  the  bereaved  mother  rang  out, 
filling  all  the  silence : 

"  Oh,  my  God  !  my  God  !  He  was  all  I 
had  !"  Isabel  felt  as  if  her  ears  would  burst  ; 
her  terror  choked  her,  and  she  fled  out  into 
the  soft,  spring  night,  leaving  the  Doctor 


to  comfort  the  childless  woman  as  best  he 
might. 

In  the  blaze  of  contempt  he  felt  for  his 
wife's  unwomanly  cowardice  her  last  chance 
of  reconciliation  was  consumed. 

As  she  sped  on  under  the  light  of  the 
young  moon,  the  oily  waters  that  crawled  in 
and  out  of  the  dock-yard  piers  seemed  to 
hunger  for  her  life  ;  her  shadow  dogged  her 
steps;  every  bush  was  a  hiding-place  for  some 
skulking  terror.  If  her  thin  skirt  caught  in 
twig  or  bramble  she  ran  on  heedlessly,  tear- 
ing it  loose,  afraid  to  look  behind  her.  When 
she  reached  her  room  at  last  she  lit  all  the 
candles  she  could  find,  and  kept  her  maid 
with  her,  on  one  pretext  or  another,  until  the 
shadow  of  this  frightful  presence  had  lifted 
a  little. 

This,  then,  was  Death,  the  one  certain  thing 
that  must  come  to  her — to  him — to  every 
creature  under  the  sun.  If  one  were  shot"  like 
Captain  Read  it  would  be  bad  enough,  but 
to  lie  still  and  have  those  invisible  fingers 
slowly  strangle  one  was  too  fearful  to  think 
about. 


1 84 

She  belonged  to  an  age  when  the  physi- 
cal side  of  dissolution  was  painfully  promi- 
nent in  the  mind  of  humanity.  Society  had 
lost  the  delicate  Greek  sense  of  proportion 
which  had  ornamented  the  very  sarcoph- 
agi of  the  ancients  with  processions  of  all 
that  made  life  lovely,  and  suggested  thereby 
the  hope  of  a  happier  future  existence.  She 
was  accustomed  to  the  horrible  mortalities 
which  made  the  tombstones  of  her  own 
generation  hideous. 

"  Though  worms  destroy  this  body,  yet  in 
my  flesh  shall  I  see  God,"  Wickford  had 
said. 

"  Though  worms — "  Her  mind  reeled  at 
the  thought  of  what  must  come  after  death, 
and  it  was  characteristic  of  her  animal  nature 
that  bodily  corruption  should  occupy  her 
thoughts  to  the  exclusion  of  spiritual  beatifi- 
cation, as  she  tossed  to  and  fro  during  the 
long  night.  The  idea  that  she  had  run  away 
tormented  her  also — run  away  in  the  face  of 
distress — deserted  under  the  eye  of  the  man 
in  whom  she  most  desired  to  inspire  confi- 
dence. 


She  formed  all  sorts  of  projects  for  the  be- 
reaved mother's  assistance,  and  anticipated 
their  fulfilment  with  a  glow  of  self-gratula- 
tion.  It  did  not  strike  her  that,  to  one  un- 
acquainted with  the  nervous  shock  she  re- 
ceived in  watching  this,  her  first  death-bed, 
her  conduct  must  seem  selfish  and  heartless 
in  the  extreme. 

Next  morning  she  told  Aunt  Hannah 
about  the  scene  in  the  cottage,  and  they 
did  what  they  could  together  to  help  Mrs. 
Saunders.  But  Miss  Wickford  appreciated 
the  effect  Isabel's  flight  might  have  upon 
the  Doctor  much  more  justly  than  the  girl 
herself  could  do.  She  judged  accurately 
the  contempt  which  he  would  visit  upon 
the  head  of  any  one  possessing  less  sto- 
icism than  he  had  trained  himself  to  exer- 
cise. She  lost  no  time,  therefore,  in  pay- 
ing him  a  special  visit,  when  she  dwelt 
upon  the  extenuations  of  Madame's  con- 
duct with  all  the  eloquence  at  her  com- 
mand. However,  Wickford  pursued  his  tac- 
tics of  absolute  taciturnity  with  regard  to 
his  wife ;  and  as  the  old  lady  said  to  her- 


1 86 


self,  "  no  man  can  open  an  oyster  with  his 
fingers." 

She  thought  it  best  to  tell  Isabel  what  a 
grave  mistake  hers  had  been,  and  Madame's 
sense  of  being  in  disgrace  aggravated  her 
morbid  dread  of  meeting  her  husband. 
When  they  found  themselves  together  in 
the  houses  of  the  poor  she  would  slip  away 
as  soon  as  possible,  making  the  excuse  that 
as  the  Doctor  was  here  now,  there  could  be 
no  possible  need  of  her.  She  fancied  that 
she  had  thus  mystified  these  ignorant  peo- 
ple about  the  relations  existing  between  her 
husband  and  herself  until  a  woman  once 
stopped  her  at  the  threshold,  saying: 

"You  won't  want  to  come  in  just  now — 
the  Doctor's  here."  Much  as  she  would 
have  liked  to  run  away,  Isabel  did  pay  her 
visit,  nevertheless,  for  her  pride's  sake,  but 
she  got  off  as  soon  as  she  could  without  ex- 
citing comment. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE  summer  came,  but  it  brought  no 
guests  to  the  great  house.  Autumn  followed, 
spreading  its  rich  India  carpet  of  leaves  be- 
fore the  retreating  footsteps  of  the  dying 
year.  But  Madame  never  rode  a-horseback 
now.  Her  pleasure -loving  nature  starved 
in  the  existence  she  was  enduring;  it  could 
hardly  be  called  a  life  where  so  much  of  her 
personality  perforce  found  no  food. 

Her  affection  belonged  to  Wickford — not 
to  humanity;  yet  she  devoted  herself  to  the 
sick  and  suffering,  and  her  husband  seemed 
to  reck  nothing  of  her  doings.  Even  the 
love  that  animated  her  life  was  not  of  the 
variety  "which  casteth  out  fear."  She  was 
torn  between  her  desire  to  be  with  him  and  a 
nervous  dread  of  his  reproaches,  should  they 
ever  find  voice.  The  internal  conflict  robbed 
her  of  any  elasticity  she  had  preserved,  and 


1 88 


her  joyless  mode  of  living  began  to  tell  upon 
her  physique.  She  grew  thin,  and  people  said 
Madame  Wickford  was  losing  her  good  looks. 
When  Isabel  heard  it,  the  idea  of  becoming 
less  beautiful  gave  her  sharp  pain  even  in 
the  midst  of  her  more  serious  troubles. 
Sorrow  had  brayed  her  as  in  a  mortar,  but 
the  vanity  of  the  woman  survived  all  her 
other  characteristics. 

During  the  second  winter  she  was  astonished 
to  see  how  often  the  Doctor  made  use  of  his 
gig  in  paying  his  visits  even  in  the  immedi- 
ate neighborhood.  In  roundabout  ways  she 
picked  up  scraps  of  information  which  she 
pieced  together,  and  thus  learned  that  his 
disease  was  beginning  to  sap  his  vitality  per- 
ceptibly. Aunt  Hannah  told  her  that  even 
his  voice  was  changing  to  a  harsh,  metallic 
sound ;  personally,  though,  she  knew  noth- 
ing, as  she  had  not  exchanged  a  dozen  words 
with  him  for  a  twelvemonth. 

Her  solitary  holidays  were  nearly  the 
hardest  hours  of  Isabel's  life ;  the  feast 
tides  were  associated  in  her  mind  with  the 
junketings  which  she  had  known  as  a  girl. 


189 

But  she  had  a  sentiment  about  going  away 
from  home  at  Christmas  or  Easter;  it  was 
to  her  as  if  she  were  trying  to  shirk  her  por- 
tion of  the  burden  of  loneliness  which  had 
fallen  upon  the  old  house.  So  she  would 
eat  her  turkey  and  mince-pie  over  against 
the  empty  chair  she  always  ordered  placed 
for  the  master  of  the  house,  who  never  came. 

Two  years  slipped  away  in  this  dreary 
fashion.  People  had  accustomed  themselves 
to  the  rift  between  Wickford  and  his  wife, 
much  as  they  had  grown  familiar  with  the 
Doctor's  veil.  There  was  a  certain  amount 
of  pity  for  Isabel  in  her  neighbors'  hearts, 
not  unmixed  with  contempt,  as  pity  is  apt 
to  be.  She  could  not  keep  her  own  husband, 
the  prosperous  mothers  of  families  averred ; 
and  "  that  always  showed  there  wasn't  much 
in  a  woman,  after  all." 

As  for  Wickford,  his  popularity  was  an  in- 
tegral part  of  the  man.  He  fitted  exactly 
into  his  niche  in  society ;  he  was  essentially 
of  the  same  weave  with  his  neighbors,  only 
of  a  finer  texture.  They  understood  him ; 


190 

therefore  the  towns-people  loved  him  as  one 
of  themselves,  who  only  had  attained  the 
greatest  possible  elevation  of  character.  It 
used  to  be  a  saying  among  the  fishermen 
that  "  Doctor  Wickford  would  make  the 
finest  funeral  in  the  county,"  which  here,  as 
in  the  old  days  of  Egypt,  was,  after  all,  the 
real  test  of  a  man's  acceptability  to  his  fel- 
lows. 

It  was  in  the  autumn  of  the  second  year 
that  Wickford's  indomitable  will  succumbed 
to  the  ravages  of  disease.  He  had,  of  course, 
been  obliged  to  keep  his  room  at  times  when 
he  passed  through  some  ephemerally  dan- 
gerous crisis.  But  the  periods  of  seclusion 
had  of  late  grown  more  frequent  and  of 
longer  duration;  he  had  struggled  with  a 
nearly  superhuman  endurance  against  the 
inevitable,  but  physical  weakness  vanquished 
him  at  last ;  he  knew  his  end  was  near,  and 
he  concentrated  the  energies  of  his  whole 
soul  in  the  effort  to  preserve  his  distorted 
features  from  the  scrutiny  of  strange  eyes. 

The  thought  of  being  talked  over,  as  he 
knew  only  too  well  the  dead  are  discussed 


in  every  country  town,  commented  on,  and 
described  with  a  plethora  of  disgusting  de- 
tail, was  intolerable  to  him.  The  same  senti- 
ment that  had  induced  him  to  shroud  his 
face  in  crape  during  his  life  animated  his 
preparations  for  the  death  he  expected,  at 
furthest,  in  a  few  days.  There  had  been  a 
hemorrhage  during  the  night  and  he  was 
very  weak,  but  he  managed  to  dress  him- 
self after  a  fashion,  and,  adjusting  his  veil, 
rang  for  the  man-servant  whom  he  had  rea- 
son to  believe  loved  him  enough  to  follow 
his  injunctions  to  the  letter,  even  after  he 
should  be  forever  beyond  enforcing  his 
orders. 

When  the  man  came  he  bade  him  put 
fresh  sheets  on  the  bed,  and  set  the  room 
in  order.  "Ain't  you  goin'  out,  master?" 
the  negro  inquired,  as  he  went  about  his 
work. 

"No,"  Wickford  answered;  "  I  don't  think 
I'll  ever  go  out  again,  William  ;  that's  what  I 
want  to  see  you  about." 

"  O  Lord,  master,  please  don't  say  that ; 
it's  just  a-begging  of  death  to  come  'long, 


192 

de  way  you's  talkin'  !"  the  servant  ex- 
claimed. 

"  I  don't  think  supplications  one  way  or 
the  other  would  make  much  difference,"  the 
Doctor  answered.  "  Stop  blubbering,  Will- 
iam, and  listen  to  me." 

The  man  grew  quiet  instantly. 

"  If  any  one  wants  to  come  in,"  Wickford 
continued,  with  an  intensity  of  utterance 
that  might  well  have  impressed  a  stronger 
mind  than  the  negro's,  "stand  at  the  door 
and  prevent  it — by  force,  if  necessary.  Tell 
them  my  curse — the  curse  of  a  dying  man- 
is  on  the  one  who  crosses  this  threshold  be- 
fore I  am  cold.  And  listen,  William,  if  you 
never  listened  to  a  word  of  mine  before : 
get  O'Connor  to  help  you  watch ;  let  no- 
body— you  understand  ? — nobody,  not  even 
your  mistress,  enter  this  room  while  I  am 
alive,  or,  as  I  believe  in  a  living  soul,  I 
will  haunt  you  till  the  day  of  your  death!" 
There  was  something  terrible  in  the  con- 
centrated energy  of  the  last  words,  spoken 
in  a  generation  when  the  belief  in  ghosts 
was  prevalent  among  all  classes.  The  negro's 


193 

eyes  rolled   in   their  sockets  and   he  shook 
with  terror. 

"  I  won't,  Mars'  Gordon — hones',  I  won't ; 
only  please,  sir,  don't  ha'nt  we  all.  If  yo' 
got  to  die,  fur  de'  Lord's  sake  don't  come 
back  no  mo' !" 

"  Very  good,"  resumed  the  Doctor,  in  his 
ordinary  tone  of  voice.  "  Now  get  me  some 
milk,  and  leave  it  there  by  the  bed.  Take 
out  that  suit  of  black  broadcloth  in  the  bot- 
tom drawer  and  a  change  of  linen ;  lay  them 
on  a  chair  by  the  bed,  too.  I  will  then  have 
a  letter  to  give  you,  and  we  will  say  good- 
bye." 

The  negro  sobbed  once  or  twice  as  he 
moved  back  and  forward,  occupied  with  his 
task.  Wickford's  slender  reserve  of  strength 
was  nearly  exhausted,  but  he  got  up  and  tot- 
tered about,  making  such  ghastly  prepara- 
tions as  he  deemed  necessary.  There  were 
the  dressings  and  bandages,  a  pencil  and 
paper  in  case  he  had  anything  to  say  at  the 
last  moment ;  now  everything  was  complete 
save  this  letter,  which  he  must  get  off  his 
hands  at  once,  then  he  could  die  easily.  The 
13 


194 

pain  gnawed  him  so,  he  could  hardly  com- 
mand his  mind  as  he  wrote  with  trembling 
fingers : 

"  MY  WIFE, — This  is  the  second  letter  I 
have  had  the  occasion  to  address  you  in  our 
short  married  life.  There  never  was  any  real 
congeniality  between  us,  and  your  levity  and 
unfeeling  conduct  have  alienated  any  affec- 
tion I  ever  bore  you.  Our  marriage  was  a 
huge  mistake;  but  now  that  I  am  a  dying 
man  it  would  ill  become  me  to  sit  in  judg- 
ment on  your  conduct.  We  do  not  love  each 
other,  and,  in  the  best  sense,  there  was  never 
any  real  affection  between  us.  On  the  brink 
of  eternity  let  us  not  prevaricate,  even  to 
ourselves.  Some  men  could  have  perhaps 
forgiven  you  your  unchaste  conduct  and 
your  habit  of  falsehood  ;  I  could  not. 

"  I  may  have  been  to  blame  towards  you  in 
some  regards ;  if  so,  I  shall  soon  stand  before 
a  tribunal  where  all  things  are  made  clear. 
What  is  past  is  past ;  but  what  I  have  to  say 
to  you  relates  to  the  present.  As  I  wrote,  I 
am  a  dying  man,  completely  in  your  power, 


195 

therefore  it  rests  with  you  to  earn  my  ever- 
lasting gratitude,  or  my  curses,  which  shall 
dog  you  for  the  remainder  of  your  life.  Of 
course,  you  can  order  the  door  of  my  room 
broken  down,  and  force  yourself  or  let  others 
thrust  their  presence  upon  me  in  my  last  mo- 
ments. What  I  beg  of  you  is,  that  you  use 
the  power  conferred  upon  you  by  your  posi- 
tion as  my  wife  to  preserve  the  quiet  of  my 
end,  and  keep  the  secret  of  my  disfigured  face 
inviolate  even  unto  my  burial. 

"  When  I  am  found  I  shall  be  dressed  as  I 
wish  to  be  for  my  last  sleep,  and  I  conjure 
you,  by  all  you  deem  holy,  that  you  follow 
my  instructions  and  lay  me  in  the  grave  as 
you  find  me.  If  you  do  so,  I  grant  you  full 
and  hearty  pardon  for  any  of  your  offences 
against  me,  and  I  pray  God  I  may  have  op- 
portunity in  the  Hereafter  to  thank  you  for 
the  service  you  will  have  rendered  me. 

"  My  will  is  in  the  safe  in  the  office ;  you 
will  find  I  leave  you  everything,  outside  of 
a  few  legacies  to  the  servants,  on  condition 
that  you  follow  this  my  last  request.  Pray- 
ing that  no  diseased  curiosity  or  false  idea 


196 

of  kindness  will  tempt  you  to  transgress  my 
commands, 

"I  remain,  what  I  have  always  been, 
"  Your  faithful  husband, 

"GORDON  WlCKFORD." 

When  he  had  folded  the  paper,  addressed 
and  sealed  it,  he  extended  his  wasted  hand 
to  the  waiting  negro. 

"  You  have  been  a  good  friend  of  mine, 
William,"  he  gasped.  "  Better  than  many  a 
one  who  deserved  more  from  me.  I  have  re- 
membered you  in  my  will — see  when  I  am 
gone." 

"  Oh,  Mars'  Gordon !"  the  poor  fellow 
sobbed.  "  Please  git  well ;  I  don't  want  no 
money  nor  nothin' !  You  has  been  a  good 
master,  and  I  jes'  want  to  see  you  round 
again  like  you  used  to  be.  You  cured  such 
a  lot  of  people,  Mars'  Gordon — can't  you 
cure  yourself?"  he  queried. 

"  No,  William,"  the  Doctor  answered.  "  It 
is  my  time  to  go  now;  we  must  say  good- 
bye forever." 

"  Lemme  stay  with  you — please  lemme 


197 

stay,"  the  negro  urged,  "  for  Goad's  sake, 
Mars'  Gordon !  I  won't  never  breave  a  word 
of  what  I  sees ;  only  lemme  stay  and  take 
care  of  you." 

Gordon  smiled  faintly  behind  his  veil.  "  I 
can't,  my  poor  fellow,"  he  answered.  "You 
are  making  it  unnecessarily  hard  for  me.  Go 
now ;  tell  Miss  Hannah  good-bye  for  me,  and 
say  I  did  not  send  for  her  because  I  was 
afraid  she  might  insist  on  staying  and  seeing 
the  last  of  one  to  whom  she  has  always  been 
most  kind.  Go  now,  William,  and  God  bless 
you." 

As  the  man  passed  out  of  the  door  sob- 
bing, Wickford  shot  the  bolt  behind  him,  and 
tottered  over  to  the  bed  exhausted. 


CHAPTER   XVI 

MADAME  was  not  in  the  house  when  Will- 
iam looked  for  her  to  deliver  the  letter,  so  he 
ran  over  to  Miss  Hannah  with  the  message ; 
such  portentous  news  was  too  big  for  him  to 
hold  alone.  He  rushed  into  the  sitting-room, 
where  the  old  lady  was  busily  sewing. 

"Oh,  Miss  Hannah,  Miss  Hannah!"  he 
gasped  ;  "  Mars'  Gordon's  dyin',  an'  he  done 
shut  we  all  out  of  his  room.  He  say  I  mus' 
say  good-bye  to  you,  and  tell  you  he  don't 
want  no  one  fussin'  roun'  him,  or  he'd  have 
sent  for  you  befo'  he  goes." 

"What's  that  you're  saying?"  said  the  old 
lady.  "  The  nigger's  crazy  !" 

"  No,  ma'am,  I  ain't  crazy  !"  asserted  Will- 
iam. "  Here's  a  letter  I  mus'  give  Madame 
Wickford  ;  does  you  know  whar'  she's  gone?" 

"  No,  I  don't ;  but  I'm  going  right  over  to 
see  Gordon  myself,"  she  answered,  with  a  de- 


199 

cided  snap  of  her  old  jaws.  She  remembered 
another  letter  her  nephew  had  written  his 
wife,  and  she  determined  to  shield  the  girl 
from  the  contents  of  this  one  if  it  were  pos- 
sible. 

"You  kyant  go  see  him,  Miss  Hannah," 
the  negro  urged.  "Ain't  I  done  tole  you 
he  say  nobody  kin  come  in  ?" 

The  old  lady  did  not  stop  to  argue,  but 
sailed  over  the  street,  the  cold  autumn  winds 
fluttering  the  strings  of  her  cap  and  blowing 
out  her  shawl  as  she  walked.  She  stalked 
through  the  office,  and  was  about  to  try  the 
inner  door  when  William  pushed  in  front  of 
her. 

"Don't,  Miss  Hannah!  please,  ma'am, 
don't !"  he  said.  "  'Cause  I  ain't  a-goin'  to 
let  you  git  in,  an'  it's  no  use  talkin*. 

"  Stand  back !"  she  exclaimed,  perempto- 
rily. But  William  kept  his  place,  protest- 
ing, 

"  I  don't  want  to  hinder  you,  Miss  Han- 
nah ;  but,  'fore  God,  you  kyant  go  in  dere  as 
long  as  I'm  a  livin'  nigger !" 

"  Gordon  !"  she  called  —  "  Gordon,  come, 


2OO 


open  the  door!  It  is  I  —  Aunt  Hannah; 
won't  you  let  me  in  ?" 

There  was  no  sound  from  beyond,  and  the 
old  lady  stood  wrathfully  surveying  the  black 
guardian  of  the  door. 

"  Wait  till  your  mistress  comes  home,  and 
we'll  see — "  she  said,  at  last,  as  she  realized 
how  helpless  she  was  to  carry  her  point  in 
the  face  of  such  opposition.  "  Give  me  that 
letter  to  Madame  Wickford  !"  she  demanded, 
and,  seizing  the  paper,  she  hurried  away  in 
search  of  Isabel. 

Madame  had  come  in  from  her  morning 
walk,  and  was  in  her  own  room,  laying  aside 
her  plumed  bonnet,  as  the  old  woman  en- 
tered. 

"  Good-morning,  Aunt  Hannah  !"  she  said. 
"  You're  over  here  early.  Sit  down,  I  want 
to  talk  to  you  about  Gordon ;  he  has  not 
been  out  of  his  room  for  days.  Won't 
you  look  in  on  him,  and  see  what  is  the 
matter?" 

Aunt  Hannah  said  nothing  for  the  moment. 
How  was  she  to  break  the  news  to  this  poor 
tarnished  butterfly  she  wondered.  "That's 


2OI 

just  what  I  came  to  talk  about,"  she  said,  at 
last. 

Madame  turned  and  looked  at  her.  There 
was  something  strange  in  the  old  face  that 
made  her  tremble.  "  Oh !  is  anything  more 
the  matter?"  she  faltered  ;  everything  in  her 
poor  young  life  had  gone  so  vitally  wrong 
that  the  unexpected  must,  she  thought,  al- 
ways mean  the  most  terrible. 

"  Don't  get  frightened,  dearie !"  the  old 
woman  said,  reassuringly.  "  William  came 
to  me  with  some  trumped-up  story  about 
Gordon's  having  locked  himself  in  and  for- 
bidden any  one  to  come  near  him.  Do  you 
believe  it,  that  crazy  nigger  won't  let  me  pass 
the  door!" 

Madame  sat  down ;  her  knees  would  not 
bear  her  any  longer.  Could  he  have  taken 
the  one  hope  from  her — was  she  not  even  to 
claim  the  right  to  be  his  nurse,  and  assuage 
the  final  torture  as  much  as  was  humanly 
possible  ? 

"  I've  got  a  letter  here  that  your  husband 
wrote  you  ;  have  you  got  strength  to  bear  it, 
Isabel  ?"  Miss  Hannah  queried,  gazing  com- 


2O2 


passionately  at  the  young  woman's  white 
face  and  trembling  hands. 

"Yes;  give  it  to  me,"  Madame  answered. 
"I  will  take  it  now." 

She  read  the  letter  through ;  then,  as  she 
had  done  on  that  other  night  which  seemed 
so  long  ago,  she  handed  it  to  the  old  lady, 
saying,  simply,  "  Read  it,  Aunt  Hannah." 
She  could  not  cry,  she  could  not  storm,  and 
she  sat  there  wondering  at  her  own  impas- 
sivity in  the  face  of  such  fearful  tidings.  One 
thing  was  clear  in  Isabel's  perturbed  mind. 
She  would  grant  his  strange  wish,  even  if  it 
killed  her,  for  she  was  determined  to  buy  one 
kind  thought,  at  least,  from  him  before  he 
died  ;  for  this  she  would  pay  any  sacrifice  he 
demanded. 

Miss  Wickford  had  finished  the  letter 
now,  and  looked  up  grieved  at  the  shock- 
ing news  it  contained.  She  was  aston- 
ished, as  well,  at  the  unusual  request  it 
embodied.  "  You  are  not  going  to  hear  to 
such  nonsense,  are  you,  Isabel?"  she  que- 
ried. "  His  shutting  himself  up  in  this  way 
is  just  like  an  animal  dying  in  his  hole.  It 


203 

isn't  a  decent  ending  for  a  Christian  gentle- 
man." 

"  Please  don't  think  ill  of  me,"  Madame 
answered.  "You  see  what  he  says;  I  can 
never  convince  him  now  that  I  was  not  a 
wicked  woman,  but  at  least  he  shall  know 
that  I  was  an  obedient  wife.  I'm  not  going 
to  let  any  one  go  in  there  unless  he  wants  it." 

Miss  Wickford  was  crying  softly.  "  But, 
good  land !"  she  exclaimed,  "  if  he  should 
think  better  of  it,  think  what  he  is  going 
to  suffer,  child  !  It's  downright  unnatural  of 
you  to  leave  him  alone.  I  shall  go  myself  if 
you  don't."  She  arose  as  she  spoke,  and 
started  down  the  steep  stairway  to  help 
speed  the  last  of  the  Wickfords  on  his  long 
journey. 

Memories  thronged  about  her:  figures  of 
her  former  self ;  of  her  parents ;  of  that  boy- 
officer  who  had  gone  away  to  the  Revolution, 
never  to  return;  of  Wickford  as  a  child;  of 
his  father.  The  family  ghosts  were  haunting 
her  as  she  took  her  way  along  the  cold  pas- 
sage to  Wickford's  inner  room  ;  it  was  use- 
less to  argue  with  William  at  the  office  en- 


2O4 

trance.  She  knew  Isabel  was  following,  but 
the  girl  had  been  so  bidable  for  years,  and  so 
malleable  in  Miss  Wickford's  hands,  that  the 
thought  of  her  interference  never  occurred  to 
the  resolute  old  lady.  As  she  reached  the 
door  Madame  passed  in  front  of  her. 

"  Dear  aunt,  I  don't  want  to  worry  you  or 
do  what  you  think  wrong,  but  you  must 
not  try  to  go  in,"  she  said,  softly.  Her  face 
was  white,  and  her  eyes  shone  out  of  dark 
sockets ;  it  touched  Aunt  Hannah  to  see  the 
stolid  misery  of  the  girl.  Even  a  year  ago 
Isabel  would  have  cried  out  under  the  lash, 
but  now  she  felt  the  futility  of  protest. 

"  Let  me  pass,  you  poor  child,"  the  old 
lady  insisted,  trying  to  brush  her  aside. 

"  I  cannot,"  Madame  returned,  with  a  spice 
of  her  old  decision.  "  He  is  master  in  his 
own  house,  and  even  if  he  wishes  what  is  not 
wise,  he  shall  be  obeyed.  You  cannot  pass 
here."  If  a  tame  pigeon  had  flown  in  her 
face,  it  could  not  have  astonished  Miss  Wick- 
ford  more. 

"Why,  Isabel,  are  you  crazy?"  she  asked, 
in  amazement. 


205 

"  No ;  but  as  long  as  I  have  the  power  I 
shall  keep  watch  beside  this  door.  His  bed 
is  so  near  I  can  hear  everything,  and  if  he 
wants  me  even  at  the  last —  Oh,  Aunt  Han- 
nah, even  if  he  whispers  that  he  wants  me,  I 
shall  hear  it !" 

She  crouched  down  on  the  sill,  and  leaned 
her  head  against  the  door  with  a  look  in  her 
brown  eyes  that  reminded  Miss  Wickford 
of  a  faithful  dog.  She  saw  it  was  useless  to 
reason  with  the  girl  now.  She  got  Isabel  a 
shawl  to  wrap  herself  in,  and  determined  to 
see  what  could  be  done  later.  The  young 
woman  thanked  her  for  the  covering,  and 
then  fell  to  listening  again,  every  nerve 
strained  to  catch  the  faintest  rustling  on  the 
other  side  of  the  door. 

Miss  Wickford  sat  with  her  for  a  time ; 
she  then  bethought  her  of  the  minister,  and 
hoping  that  he  might  have  the  necessary 
influence,  she  determined  to  bring  him  to 
argue  with  Madame.  In  about  an  hour 
they  returned  together,  and  found  the  same 
huddled  figure  keeping  guard  over  the 
door.  The  gray-headed  old  pastor  greeted 


2C>6 

Madame  kindly;  she  hardly  seemed  to  no- 
tice him. 

"  My  child,"  he  said,  "  you  must  try  to 
look  at  this  matter  reasonably ;  the  hand  of 
the  Lord  is  heavy  upon  you,  but  you  must 
strive  to  bear  it  with  meekness.  This  is  a 
foolish  idea  of  Wickford's,  and  although  a 
wife  should  always  be  submissive,  looking  up 
to  her  husband  as  '  the  church  does  to  the 
Lord  who  is  its  head,"  yet  in  this  case  1 
would  counsel  you  to  place  wisdom  before 
obedience.  There  is  no  question  about  it, 
his  request  is  the  result  of  delirium ;  I  con- 
sider it  even  your  duty  to  disregard  it  for  his 
good." 

He  waited  for  an  answer,  but  as  she  made 
no  sign  he  continued :  "  The  wisest  thing  is 
to  insist  upon  doing  what  religion  and  medi- 
cal science  could  accomplish  for  his  relief. 
Break  open  the  door!" 

Madame  sprang  up  to  her  full  height, 
stretching  out  her  arms  across  the  doorway. 
Her  eyes  blazed  as  she  turned  on  the  old 
man. 

"  Who  are  you  that  talk  of  breaking  doors 


207 

in  my  house?"  she  demanded,  imperiously. 
"  Understand  now,  once  and  for  all,  both  of 
you,  that  the  Doctor's  wishes  shall  be  obeyed 
as  long  as  there  is  life  in  my  body  to  en- 
force them.  I  am  his  wife,  and  mistress  here 
in  his  absence.  Leave  me  alone,  I  say;  I  will 
watch  by  my  own  dead."  She  sank  down 
again  on  the  threshold,  moaning  softly  to  her- 
self as  she  heard  a  stifled  cry  of  pain  in  the 
room  beyond.  They  tried  to  reason  with  her 
from  time  to  time,  but  she  would  only  shake 
her  head  and  bid  them  leave  her.  The  day 
wore  on,  and  the  sun  streamed  in  the  little 
passage  window  looking  westward.  The 
old  man  bade  Aunt  Hannah  good-bye,  and 
passed  out,  leaving  the  two  women  together. 

As  night  fell  Miss  Wickford  brought  Isa- 
bel food,  and,  although  she  refused  to  eat 
anything,  she  drank  some  water  greedily, 
and  then  fell  back  into  her  old  position. 

"  Won't  you  go  to  bed,  dearie  ?"  Miss 
Wickford  asked. 

"  No,  Aunt  Hannah,  I'm  not  going  to 
leave  him ;  he  knows  I  am  here  if  he  wants 
me,"  Madame  answered. 


208 


With  the  habit  of  an  experienced  nurse 
Miss  Wickford  determined  to  save  herself 
wherever  she  could ;  she  knew  there  might 
be  more  watching  to  do  than  one  person 
could  manage,  so  she  settled  herself  as  com- 
fortably as  possible,  and  dropped  to  sleep 
after  a  while.  In  the  stillness  of  the  night 
Isabel  could  hear  Wickford  stirring  on  the 
other  side  of  the  door. 

"  Husband,"  she  whispered, "  won't  you  let 
me  come  in  ?" 

The  queer,  metallic  voice  answered  her, 
"  No  ;  go  away." 

"Gordon,"  she  pleaded,  "I  will  keep  every 
one  else  out ;  but  oh,  for  our  old  love's  sake, 
let  me  help  you,  dear!"  She  waited,  but 
there  was  no  answer.  "  Believe  me,  for 
God's  sake ;  I  am  an  innocent  woman  !  Oh, 
let  me  in!  If  you  knew  how  I  have  tried 
to  make  myself  ready  for  this  time,  when 
I  might  serve  you  !  how  I  have  done  every- 
thing I  hated  and  given  up  everything  I 
liked,  you  would  believe  me!  Don't  you 
remember  that  day  under  the  plum-trees? 
Please  let  me  in,  dear — please !  I  won't  come 


209 

unless  you  say  so,  and  no  one  else  shall  either, 
unless  they  force  me  away.  Won't  you  let 
me  in  and  kiss  me  good-bye,  beloved  ?"  She 
waited  to  listen,  and  to  her  horror  she  could 
hear  nothing.  Her  brain  reeled  as  she 
crouched  there.  "  Speak  to  me  !"  she  plead- 
ed ;  "  only  tell  me  you  are  alive,  and  I  will  be 
silent.  Oh,  for  Heaven's  sake,  speak  to  me !" 

"  I  am  alive,"  a  faint  voice  answered  her. 
So  she  lay  on  the  door-sill  listening  to  his 
intermittent  meanings,  all  her  being  concen- 
trated in  her  ears,  while  the  night  waned 
and  the  dawn  broke  in  the  east.  Miss  Han- 
nah sought  to  persuade  her  to  take  food, 
but  she  would  not  eat.  From  time  to  time 
the  neighbors  dropped  in ;  they  joined  the 
old  woman  in  her  remonstrances,  but  Ma- 
dame Wickford  heeded  them  not ;  she  hardly 
seemed  even  to  hear  them  as  she  sat,  every 
nerve  strained  in  her  watchful  listening.  Ail 
her  faculties  seemed  absorbed  in  her  watch, 
and  the  nearer  sights  and  sounds  came  to  her 
muffled  by  her  abstraction. 

It  was  equally  useless  to  argue  with  the 
negro  and  the  old  gardener;  threats  and 


210 

bribes  made  no  impression  upon  them ;  the 
master-will  of  the  sick  man  inside  there  still 
swayed  all  the  members  of  his  household. 
He  had  said  he  wished  to  die  alone,  and  they 
banded  together  to  carry  out  his  injunctions, 
irrespective  of  their  neighbors'  opinions  in 
regard  to  their  conduct.  That  he  deemed  it 
advisable  seemed  enough  for  them,  which 
spoke  volumes  for  his  just  and  wise  sway  in 
former  times.  It  was  a  great  scandal  to  the 
town  ;  but  what  was  to  be  done  ?  O'Connor 
and  William  watched  alternately  at  one  door, 
the  grief  -  stricken  woman  sat  at  the  other. 
Without  violence  there  could  be  no  intru- 
sion upon  the  Doctor  possible,  nor  did  any 
one  feel  authorized  to  use  drastic  measures 
in  the  face  of  Isabel's  decided  protest.  Al- 
though she  was  discredited  in  the  town's 
eyes,  yet  she  was  Madame  Wickford  and  in 
her  own  house  ;  that  still  counted  for  some- 
thing. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

DAY  and  night  had  become  the  same  to 
Isabel,  except  that  in  the  quiet  darkness  she 
could  better  hear  the  microphonic  sounds 
and  the  occasional  stifled  groans  that  told 
her  Wickford  was  still  alive.  Sometimes, 
when  the  silence  lasted  an  intolerable  time, 
she  would  plead  with  him  to  let  her  under- 
stand, if  he  could,  that  he  knew  she  still 
watched  beside  him,  and  the  queer,  unfamil- 
iar voice  answered  faintly,  yet  her  quick  ear 
caught  it  with  glad  assurance  that  he  could 
respond. 

Towards  daylight  on  the  second  night 
the  moans  became  more  frequent.  There 
was  a  cry  of  agony,  which  broke  the  still- 
ness. She  writhed  on  the  hard  boards  of 
the  passage  as  though  she  would  bury  her- 
self out  of  hearing,  mental  torture  shook 
her  like  an  ague,  but  she  never  moved  from 


212 


her  post.  Miss  Wickford  had  dropped  asleep 
in  her  chair,  and,  looking  at  her,  Isabel  won- 
dered how  rest  was  possible  with  that  fearful 
cry  pulsating  yet  through  the  empty  house. 
She  heard  him  moving  now;  it  seemed  as  if 
he  had  fallen  somehow ;  now  he  was  up  again. 
Oh,  if  she  could  only  help  him  !  From  the 
quiet  that  intervened  between  the  small 
rustlings  he  seemed  to  rest  every  now  and 
then.  At  length  all  was  still.  She  waited 
for  what  seemed  an  age ;  then  she  called  his 
name.  There  was  no  answer,  but  she  heard 
a  little  motion  from  within.  Perhaps  she 
troubled  him  with  her  insistance  ;  she  deter- 
mined, therefore,  to  lie  still  and  wait. 

Again  the  dawn  swept  up  out  of  the  sea, 
rosy  and  clear ;  she  could  see  the  pink  light 
of  a  new  day  on  the  western  walls  of  the  pas- 
sage ;  she  wondered  to  herself  if  Wickford 
slept,  he  was  so  quiet.  Her  own  eyes, 
though,  seemed  as  if  they  were  buttoned 
open.  At  last  there  was  a  scream  from  the 
other  side  of  the  door — faint,  but  freighted 
with  untold  anguish.  The  old  woman  heard 
it,  and  awoke  shuddering.  The  Irishman 


213 

and  the  negro  heard  it,  and  drew  closer  to- 
gether. To  Madame  it  was  only  an  assur- 
ance that  he  still  lived,  while  to  these 
others  it  meant  the  beginning  of  the  end. 

Everything  was  silent  again ;  the  day 
moved  on  in  majestic  glory  of  blue  and 
gold.  There  was  the  banging  of  an  open- 
ing shutter,  a  cart  rolled  by,  and  some  one 
passed  on  horseback.  Then  the  multiplic- 
ity of  sound  became  tangled  in  her  ears  as 
the  town  awoke,  but  within  there  all  was 
deadly  quiet.  She  would  try  again  to  awa- 
ken some  response.  "Gordon!"  she  called, 
but  only  her  own  voice  echoed  down  the 
bare  passage — "  Gordon,  speak  to  me !  make 
some  sign  !  Oh,  my  love,  my  love,  be  merci- 
ful !  Make  some  sign ;  the  suspense  is  kill- 
ing me !"  Her  voice  reached  a  cry  of  an- 
guish ;  but  the  dead  are  silent  sleepers,  and 
there  was  no  answer.  The  old  woman  sat 
looking  at  her  pitifully. 

"  He  doesn't  answer,"  Isabel  whispered, 
turning  her  questioning  eyes  on  her  compan- 
ion. "  Could  he  be —  Oh,  Gordon,  Gor- 
don !"  she  cried,  "  won't  you  speak  to  me 


214 

this  once?"  Springing  up  in  her  agony  of 
terror  she  beat  upon  the  door  with  open 
palms,  screaming  to  him,  calling  vainly  to 
dead  ears,  begging  vainly  for  an  answer  from 
dead  lips.  Miss  Hannah  tried  to  soothe 
her,  but  she  shook  off  the  old  woman's 
detaining  hands  and  struck  the  door  with 
frenzied  force,  bruising  her  delicate  flesh  in 
the  mad  effort  to  make  him  hear  her. 

The  lock  was  old,  and  the  wood  around  it 
too  rotten  to  resist  even  her  slender  strength. 
It  gave  way  under  her  hands,  and  she  stum- 
bled forward  into  the  dark  room,  falling 
senseless  across  the  bed,  where  he  lay  stark 
and  stiff,  dressed  for  his  burial.  The  great 
hat  was  tied  down  upon  his  head,  the  veil 
drawn  about  his  face,  and  in  his  waxen  hands 
there  was  a  paper.  He  must  have  been  dead 
for  hours. 

It  was  Aunt  Hannah  who  took  the  letter 
from  between  the  stiff  fingers  and  deciphered 
the  faint,  wavering  scrawl : 

"  I  have  heard  it  all,  dear  wife ;  you  have 
endured  even  unto  the  end.  God  bless  you, 
Isabel !  Forgive  me !  I  have  no  strength 


215 

for    more.     Bury  me    as    I    am,  for   Jesus' 
sake !" 

So  they  buried  him  according  to  his  wish, 
and  the  green  mound  over  by  old  Madame 
Wickford's  marble  shaft  hides  forever  the 
secret  that  his  veil  kept  for  so  many  years. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

ISABEL  did  not  die.  The  towns-people 
wondered  why  she  remained  among  them 
instead  of  returning  to  her  own  kin  in  the 
city ;  but  she  preferred  to  live  on  alone  in 
the  old  house,  where  all  the  fires  of  her  life 
burned  themselves  out  during  her  short  years 
of  marriage  with  the  veiled  Doctor. 

It  required  a  spiritual  upheaval,  such  as  her 
long  vigil  before  Wickford's  door,  to  awaken 
the  sleeping  soul  that  had  been  so  wofully 
tardy  in  taking  upon  itself  the  governance  of 
her  actions.  The  good  or  evil  she  had  done 
heretofore  proceeded  from  momentary  im- 
pulses as  evanescent  as  a  child's,  for,  having 
no  settled  principle  to  give  cohesion  and 
purpose  to  her  life,  she  had  drifted  rudder- 
less amid  the  temptations  that  surrounded 
her,  and  whatever  spiritual  wisdom  she  had 
at  last  achieved  was  solely  the  outcome  of 


217 

bitter  personal  experience.  Her  mistakes 
were  plain  enough  to  Isabel  now,  and  in 
looking  back  upon  her  past  she  could  recog- 
nize the  falsehood  that  had  injured  her  cause 
with  her  husband  on  one  side,  the  foolish 
vanity  that  had  ensnared  her  on  the  other. 
It  did  not  detract  from  the  bitterness  of  her 
retrospect  that  this  knowledge  had  come  all 
too  late  to  prevent  the  shipwreck  of  her 
youth.  She  grieved  heartily,  yet  she  grieved 
according  to  her  kind.  Therefore,  at  first, 
her  own  mistakes,  her  own  losses,  occupied 
her  exclusively.  Sorrow's  furnaces  had  a 
mighty  work  to  do  in  refining  away  the  mass 
of  vanity  and  exaggerated  selfishness  that 
formerly  had  blocked  all  the  outlets  of  her 
sympathy. 

It  is  impossible  that  a  crisis  such  as  the 
one  through  which  Isabel  had  passed  should 
leave  any  spirit  unchanged,  but  it  remains 
for  the  individual  to  determine  if  his  soul's 
road  thenceforth  shall  lead  up  or  down- 
ward, though  the  degree  of  this  elevation 
or  descent  is  fixed  by  the  original  nature 
of  the  spirit  itself.  Isabel  was  no  embryo 


218 


saint,  for  whom  only  the  forcing -house  of 
suffering  was  required  to  produce  an  inflo- 
rescence of  holiness ;  yet,  faulty  and  all  hu- 
man as  she  was,  a  gleam  of  higher  light  had 
fallen  upon  her  in  her  sorrow,  and  lifted  her 
above  her  old  self  for  all  time.  Whatever 
germs  of  good  lay  hidden  in  her  natural  dis- 
position now  shone  out  purer  and  stronger 
for  the  trials  through  which  she  passed. 

When  she  again  took  up  the  round  of  char- 
ities that  had  occupied  her  before  her  widow- 
hood, she  was  conscious  of  a  new  quality 
within  herself  that  bridged  the  dislike  and 
prejudice  which  formerly  divided  her  from 
those  she  helped.  Perhaps  neither  she  nor 
they  could  exactly  define  the  difference  in 
their  relations,  but  that  a  vital  change  had 
occurred  was  recognized  by  both  sides,  and 
for  the  first  time  since  her  coming  to  the 
old  town  she  began  to  feel  a  comforting 
sense  of  being  at  one  with  the  community 
in  which  she  lived.  It  was  sweet  to  know 
that  she  was  no  longer  an  Ishmaelite  among 
her  husband's  friends. 

Isabel's   charities  were  not   now   a   mere 


219 

scattering  of  alms.  She  spent  her  sympathy 
generously  too,  and  in  return  the  love  of 
those  whom  she  served  sprang  up  about  her 
and  refreshed  the  barrens  of  her  wasted  ex- 
istence. 

Nor  did  her  solace  stop  here ;  with  her 
childish  faults  nature  had  also  endowed  her 
with  a  childlike  capacity  for  forgetting  the 
disagreeable,  in  a  kind  of  day-dreaming,  in 
which  she  saw  the  past  as  she  would  have  it 
rather  than  as  it  really  was.  Thus  in  the 
recesses  of  her  bruised  heart  she  created  for 
herself  an  ideal  of  Wickford  woven  from  the 
few  happy  moments  they  had  enjoyed  to- 
gether. She  dressed  out  her  dead  love  in 
this  shimmering  array,  and  so  successfully 
muffled  the  horrors  of  her  old  life  that,  as 
time  still  further  blurred  her  memory,  she 
could  think  and  talk  of  her  husband  with  a 
tender  pleasure  that  would  have  been  incom- 
prehensible to  a  woman  of  keener  sensibili- 
ties. 

Living  thus  amid  the  transmuted  scenes 
of  her  past  life,  she  drifted  into  a  quiet  and 
not  unhappy  old  age,  useful  and  beloved 


220 


among  her  neighbors,  and  enshrined  to  their 
eyes  in  a  kind  of  perennial  romance,  which 
was  hers  by  right  of  the  tragedy  of  her  stormy 
youth. 

So  at  last  she  fell  peacefully  asleep,  and 
the  old  house  passed  into  the  hands  of 
strangers. 


THE    END 


DATE  DUE 


CAYLORD 


PMINTCOINU   •  A 


